Wilson was born in Ottawa on October 24, 1908, the son of John Armistead WilsonCBE, and his wife, Henrietta Tuzo. Wilson's father was of Scottish descent and his mother was a third-generation Canadian of French descent.
He became one of the first people in Canada to receive a degree in geophysics, graduating from Trinity College at the University of Toronto in 1930. He obtained a second (BA) degree from St John's College, Cambridge in 1932 and then a doctorate (ScD). He then pursued further graduate studies as Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. in geology in 1936 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "The Geology of the Mill Creek – Stillwater Area, Montana."
In 1946 he was appointed the first Professor of Geophysics at the University of Toronto.
He made significant contributions to the theory of plate tectonics, adding a concept of hot spots, hot region beneath the crust. Plate tectonics is the scientific theory that the rigid outer layers of the Earth (crust and part of the upper mantle), the lithosphere, is broken up into around 13 pieces or "plates" that move independently over the weaker asthenosphere.
Wilson maintained that the Hawaiian Islands were created as a tectonic plate (extending across much of the Pacific Ocean) shifted to the northwest over a fixed hot spot, spawning a long series of volcanoes. He also conceived of the transform fault, a major plate boundary where two plates move past each other horizontally (e.g., the San Andreas Fault).
The Wilson cycle of seabed expansion and contraction (associated with the Supercontinent cycle) bears his name, in recognition of his iconic observation that the present-day Atlantic Ocean appears along a former suture zone and his development in a classic 1968 paper of what was later named the "Wilson cycle" in 1975 by Kevin C. A. Burke, a colleague and friend of Wilson.
In 1968 he became the second campus principal of the University of Toronto's Erindale College, now known as the University of Toronto Mississauga. Wilson is perhaps the most notable of UTM's principals, as his time in office influenced the early development of the campus, which was formally established in 1967. In 1974 he left to become the Director General of the Ontario Science Centre and passed the role of principal to E. A. Robinson. In 1983 he became Chancellor of York University, Toronto.
He was the host of the television series The Planet of Man.
He was elected president-elect (1978–1980) and president (1980–1982) of the American Geophysical Union.
He also served as the director general of the Ontario Science Centre from 1974 to 1985.
Wilson and his plate tectonic theory are commemorated on the grounds of the centre by a giant "immovable" spike that records the amount of plate movement since Wilson's birth.
Wilson was an avid traveller and took a large number of photographs during his travels to many destinations, including European countries, parts of the then USSR, China, the southern Pacific, Africa, and to both polar regions. Although many of his photos are geological—details of rocks and their structures or panoramas of large formations—the bulk of his photos are of the places, activities and people that he saw on his travels: landscapes, city views, monuments, sites, instruments, vehicles, flora and fauna, occupations and people.
Family
In 1938 he married Isabel Jean Dickson.
He retired in 1986 and died in Toronto on April 15, 1993.
Selected publications
One Chinese Moon (1959)
Wilson, Tuzo (July 14, 1962). "Cabot Fault, An Appalachian Equivalent of the San Andreas and Great Glen Faults and some Implications for Continental Displacement". Nature. 195 (4837): 135–138. Bibcode:1962Natur.195..135W. doi:10.1038/195135a0. S2CID4289725.
↑Cousens, Brian L.; Chase, R. L.; Schilling, J.-G. (1985). "Geochemistry and origin of volcanic rocks from Tuzo Wilson and Bowie seamounts, northeast Pacific Ocean". Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. 22 (11): 1609–17. Bibcode:1985CaJES..22.1609C. doi:10.1139/e85-170.
↑Cousens, Brian L.; Chase, R. L.; Schilling, J.-G. (1985). "Geochemistry and origin of volcanic rocks from Tuzo Wilson and Bowie seamounts, northeast Pacific Ocean". Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. 22 (11): 1609–17. Bibcode:1985CaJES..22.1609C. doi:10.1139/e85-170.
