(1908-1993) Canadian Geophysicist, Plate Tectonics
J. Tuzo Wilson was one of the true powerhouses of the earth sciences and a giant of plate tectonics. His statement, “I enjoy, and always have enjoyed, disturbing scientists,” served as a kind of a motto for him as he splashed his way through the profession. Surprisingly, he was an outspoken opponent of plate tectonics for a good part of his career. Through the late 1940s and 1950s, Wilson argued vehemently for the mountain building theory of Sir Harold Jeffreys of a contracting Earth. Even then he was considered somewhat of a maverick and a brazen promoter of ideas that made many uncomfortable. Most of his research at this time was on the Canadian Shield where he coupled basic geologic relations with early geo-chronology to interpret the growth of continents on a worldwide basis. However, even in his out spoken support, privately he admitted that much of the theory was inadequate.
It was a true reflection of his mettle when he was able to switch directions and embrace the continental drift concept still in its infancy after being one of its strongest critics. At 50 years old, he became one of the strongest supporters and contributors to the development of the theory. His first contribution was to interpret the Hawaiian Islands. By looking at the current volcanic activity, the ages of the islands, and the extension into the Hawaiian and Emperor seamounts, he interpreted them to represent a stationary plume of magma from the mantle over which the Pacific plate moves. The train of islands tracks past movements of the Pacific plate. His paper “A Possible Origin of the Hawaiian Islands” summarizes this work. His second contribution was to interpret the huge fracture systems that offset mid-ocean ridges as a new class of plate boundary called transform boundaries. These huge strike-slip faults occur all along mid-ocean ridges throughout the Earth as compensation features to the spreading that takes place on the ridges as described in the paper “A New Class of Faults and their Bearing on Continental Drift.” lynn r. sykes proved Wilson’s theory, by analyzing earthquakes from these features, that they are indeed strike-slip (of lateral motion) and currently active all over. His third most famous contribution was to propose that the Atlantic Ocean closed and then reopened virtually along the same line (i.e.: “Did the Atlantic Close and Then Re-Open?”). With an enormous amount of additional research, it was shown that indeed an early ocean basin called Tethys was closed during the building of the supercontinent Pangea during the Paleozoic. The Atlantic then opened nearly along the old suture zone of this closure. This idea of zones of weakness in the Earth’s crust that would be repeatedly reactivated has subsequently been shown to be a very common phenomenon. These are three fundamental pieces of plate tectonics that have withstood the test of time, and they are only a sampling of the outstanding body of work produced by Wilson during his career.
J. Tuzo Wilson was born on October 24, 1908, in Ottawa, Canada, where he spent his youth. His mother was a famous mountaineer for whom Mount Tuzo in western Canada was named. At age 17, Wilson became a field assistant of the famous Mount Everest mountaineer Noell Odell, who showed him the wonders of field geology. Wilson enrolled at the University of Toronto, Canada, where he earned a bachelor of science with majors in both physics and geology in 1930. He considered himself to be Canada’s first ever graduate in geophysics. He earned a scholarship for graduate studies at Cambridge University, England, under Sir Harold Jeffreys, but there was no real program in geophysics and he wound up earning another bachelor of arts degree in geology in 1932. He returned to Canada to work at the Geological Survey of Canada, but the director urged him to complete his education instead. He enrolled at Princeton University, New Jersey, with classmates harry h. hess and w. maurice ewing and graduated in 1936 with a Ph.D. in geology/geophysics. He returned to the Geological Survey of Canada until the outbreak of World War II, when he joined the Canadian army as an engineer and spent three years overseas. When he returned to Canada as a colonel, he remained in the army for an additional four years. As director of operational research, he organized and carried out Exercise Musk Ox, the first ever motorized expedition—some 3,400 miles—to cross the Canadian Arctic.
J. Tuzo Wilson married Isabel Dickson in 1938. He joined the faculty at his alma mater at the University of Toronto in 1946. In 1968, Wilson left his position at the main campus at University of Toronto to serve as principal of the new Erindale College of the University of Toronto. He was forced to retire from his academic position in 1974 to become the director of the Ontario Science Center, the largest of its kind thanks to his efforts. Wilson died on April 15, 1993, of a heart attack.
J. Tuzo Wilson was a dynamo, relentlessly carrying all of his projects to success. His scientific publications were no exception, numbering well over 100 in international journals and professional volumes. Several of these are benchmarks in the plate tectonic paradigm and appear in prestigious journals like Nature. In recognition of these research contributions, Wilson received numerous honors and awards. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of England and the Royal Society of Canada. He received the Penrose Medal from the Geological Society of America, the Walter H. Bucher Medal from the American Geophysical Union, the John J. Carty Medal from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Vetlesen Prize from the Vetlesen Foundation, the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society of London, the Huntsman Award from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, and the Maurice Ewing Medal from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.
