John Milne, the “father of the seismology”, died on July 31st 1913. This paper will be delivered 100 years to the week after his death. It will focus on Milne’s extraordinary ability to communicate scientific/geological knowledge using both his artistic and literary skills, and most particularly in the context of Japan, where he enlisted the apparatus of the Meiji state to the cause of a new scientific discipline in a way unparalleled before or since. Professor John Milne, FRS, FRGS, was appointed at 25 years of age to the foundation Chair of Geology and Mining at the Imperial College of Engineering, Tokyo. To take up his post, he travelled overland to Japan through Russia, Mongolia and China in what became an eight month epic journey. While at the Tokyo University, he invented the modern seismograph, established the world’s first seismological society and journal, and pioneered instrument-based studies of seismicity. He later established the first global network of seismographs. Milne was the consummate field artist, recorder, and communicator. He published hundreds of scientific papers, and painted, photographed and drew to illustrate his work. He also wrote travelogues and poetry, and was a competent mapmaker and technical draughtsman. His vast photographic archive includes many beautiful hand-tinted magic lantern slides, some graphically illustrating the horror of earthquakes. They also give an insight into his life in Tokyo with his wife, Tone Horikawa. Archives from Japan (Tokyo University and The Northern Studies Library), Carisbrooke Castle, the London Science Museum (Wroughton Archive), the British Library and the IOW Public Records Office will be used to illustrate this paper. The paper will analyse in detail how “Earthquake Milne” used his extraordinary ability to communicate geological knowledge, as well as scientific rigour, to enlist colleagues, institutions, and the Meiji state to the cause of establishing seismology, for the first time anywhere in the world, as a science in its own right.