Ted Fujita

Tetsuya Theodore Fujita (1920-1998), known as Ted, was a Japanese and American meteorologist who revolutionised the study of severe weather. Born in Sone, Fukuoka Prefecture, he taught physics and studied at the Meiji Vocational College in Japan before moving in 1953 to the University of Chicago at the invitation of Horace Byers, where he remained until retiring in 1990. He created the Fujita scale, which links tornado damage to wind speed, and discovered downbursts and microbursts, tracing the 1975 crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 to a downburst. He pioneered tornado overflight and damage survey methods, showed that powerful tornadoes often contain multiple vortices, and ran field studies such as Project NIMROD and Project JAWS. He was widely known as Mr. Tornado.