Who was the first person to study tornadoes?

Answer 1

It is difficult to determine. Some of the earliest accounts of scientific inquiries go back at least as far as the middle of the 1800s. It is possible that scientific accounts were made before them that have been lost or have been hidden in some obscure corner of a library for the past century.

Perhaps the earliest account of a tornado from an actual scientist was one by John James Audubon, of a tornado near the Illinois/Indiana line in 1814. However, Audubon primarily studied birds and was merely present to witness the tornado. A man named James Espy appears to have conducted some study of tornadoes at least as early as 1840. By that time he had developed a hypothesis about tornadoes, which was later proven wrong. The person who may be regarded as the father of the study of tornadoes is John Park Finley, who began his research in 1879.

Answer 2

The first person to study tornadoes is typically credited to British mathematician and physicist John Dalton, who published a paper in 1794 proposing that tornadoes were rotating systems of air. However, tornado research continued to evolve over the years with contributions from various scientists and researchers.