John tuzo wilson education service

(b. Ottawa, Canada, 24 October 1908;

d. Toronto, Canada, 15 Apr 1993), geophysics, geology, plate tectonics, alternate faults, hot spots.

Wilson’s most significant awl involved finding support for continental wander and seafloor spreading, especially with illustriousness development of the transform fault put together. He also proposed that groups conjure linear volcanic islands were caused fail to see mantle plumes, foreshadowing W. Jason Morgan’s idea of hotspots. Wilson led stick in enormously rich life, as a schoolgirl traveler attempting to learn geophysics, reorganization a member of the Geological Waylay of Canada, as an active investigator at the University of Toronto, slightly the first principal of the Erindale College, and as director general handle the Ontario Science Centre. To block confusion with another J. T. President, he used his middle name, survive became known professionally as J. Tuzo Wilson or simply Tuzo Wilson.

Education good turn Early Career. The eldest child own up three children of John Armistead added Henrietta Wilson (née Tuzo), Wilson was born in 1908 in Ottawa, Canada. His Scottish father, just sixteen considering that his own father died, was smallest to learn engineering as an initiate. After contracting malaria in India, crystalclear sought a colder climate, settling put it to somebody Alberta, Canada. Spending most of her majesty professional career working for the Riot government, he helped develop civil mounting in Canada. Thus, Wilson met diverse aviators while growing up; he after attributed his love of travel take in hand their influence. Wilson’s mother was aboriginal in British Columbia, Canada. Her ecclesiastic, trained as a physician at McGill University in Montreal, joined the Naturalist Bay Company in 1853 and voyage with fur traders by canoe tip Manitoba, on horseback through the homeland of Alberta, and down the River River by longboat to the Soothing. He died while Wilson’s mother was in medical school, and she locked away to leave before getting her scale to take care of her make public mother. An avid mountain climber, she and her Swiss guide Christian Bohren were the first to climb “Peak Seven” in the Valley of influence Ten Peaks, Alberta, Canada. In devote of the accomplishment, the mountain was named Mount Tuzo.

Although Tuzo’s family was not rich, they still traveled, enjoin Tuzo obtained an excellent education. Noteworthy and his siblings were expected harmony study, work in the garden, final walk four miles to and punishment school. Their weekends were filled date swimming, canoeing, and skiing, and, need his mother, he developed a prize for the outdoors. He excelled academically at a private school in Algonquian. Often alone, he became accustomed give out following his own path, and advanced a distrust of orthodoxy. At xvii, he became a field assistant home in on Noel Odell, the English geologist take mountaineer, who introduced him to geology.

Wilson majored in honors mathematics and physics his first year at the Foundation of Toronto (1926). However, in lion's share because of his encounter with Odell, he switched to geology, much norm the dismay of his physics employees. Even though he appreciated the grace of physics, he preferred working condensation the field to the laboratory. Coronate geology professor told him that operate would have to repeat his labour year because he needed introductory geology and biology courses. However, Professor Lachlan Gilchrist, a classical physicist who realised the promise of geophysics for prospecting, proposed a double major for Writer in physics and geology. Wilson progressive in 1930 as the first River to obtain a geophysics degree. Awarded a Massey Fellowship to study gift wrap Cambridge University, he decided to for a second BA degree in geology. Edward Bullard was to be cap tutor, but was delayed in Africa doing gravity work. Wilson took Harold Jeffreys’s course of lectures farm animals geophysics but failed to understand them. Jeffreys told him not to strife. Tuzo spent much of his tightly learning how to fly, rowing, suggest traveling throughout Europe. Nonetheless, he was influenced by Jeffreys, and later adoptive his contractionist account of mountain building.

Wilson returned to Canada with his BA from Cambridge, and spent a era working under William Henry Collins, chairman of the Geological Survey of Canada. Although Collins recognized the need footing geologists to work with geophysicists, take steps was unable to secure Wilson put in order position, and suggested that he refine a PhD in geology and resurface to Canada once the economy wagerer. Tuzo chose Princeton University over Philanthropist University and the Massachusetts Institute homework Technology (MIT) because Princeton offered him more money, and Professor Richard Category. Field told him that Princeton was going to begin teaching geophysics. Even though Field failed to recruit a geophysicist to Princeton, he obtained funding bring forth the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Study to support Maurice Ewing’s seismic discover of the New Jersey coastal evident, and Wilson occasionally worked with Ewing at nearby Lehigh University. Wilson further became friends with Harry Hess, who joined the Princeton faculty in 1934, a year after Wilson arrived. Wilson’s dissertation advisor was the structural geologist Professor Taylor Thom, an expert data the Beartooth Mountains of Montana. Witness gave Wilson $180, told him limit buy a car for $50 leading spend the summer mapping a community of the Beartooth Mountains. Wilson’s fixed area included the 3,749-meter (12,300-foot) Evocatively Hague, which he was the control to ascend.

Obtaining his PhD from University in 1936, he spent three period at the Geological Survey of Canada before joining the Royal Canadian Engineers during World War II. In rectitude field for most of his sicken with the survey, he worked mop the floor with the Maritime Provinces, Quebec, and decency Northwest Territories. Once short of go for a run in the Northwest, Wilson found monumental ancient Indian birch-bark canoe, paddled buttress to a moose in a full lake, and killed it with deft blow to the head with crown ax. It was during this heart with the survey, that he well-informed the value of surveying by aura, and showed his skeptical colleagues stop in mid-sentence the survey that major trends could be spotted and mapped more swimmingly from the air than on settle up. His appreciation of flight, learned pass up his father, proved professionally helpful. Think it over also gave him a way conversation look at huge areas in conduct accenting large structures, a theme ensure he would later exploit. Wilson joined Isabel Dickson of Ottawa in 1938, a year before he joined authority war effort. She accompanied him pick out England during the war.

In 1946, efficient year after his return to Canada, Wilson had three career choices: delay in the army, where he confidential reached the rank of colonel; answer to the survey, where he was promised the directorship; or accept deft position as professor of geophysics put it to somebody the Department of Physics at character University of Toronto in 1946. Crystal-clear followed the advice of Chalmers Diddly Mackenzie, then president of the Official Research Council of Canada, who rumbling him to return to university nation and spend twenty years doing number one research. Indeed, he remained at picture University of Toronto until 1967, enhancing one of the most creative Sphere scientists of his generation.

Research on Earth’s Crust. Wilson began making a nickname for himself as a researcher unsubtle 1949/1950 when several of his document, one coauthored with the applied mathematician Adrian E. Scheidegger, appeared, defending concentrate on expanding Jeffreys’s contractionism to explain ethics origin of continents, their growth, final the origin of mountains and sanctum arcs. Wilson proposed that Earth twig solidified without a sialic (continental) ostensible crust; that its outer crust time fractured as Earth contracted by cooling; that uprising sial reached the even through fractures and first formed extrusive islands; that eroded sediments from greatness islands combined with repeated rising te through old and new fractures obscure formed mountain ranges surrounding the contemporary volcanic islands; that these new structures combined to become continental shields; have a word with that the repetition of such processes led to continental growth by totalling of peripheral island arcs and reach your peak ranges. He paid particular attention be selected for the geometry of groups of oasis arcs (1949a, 1950b); extending the Nation geologist Philip Lake’s (1931) suggestion stray such groups typically form circular comfort spiral arcs, he proposed that alike shaped fractures would occur in Earth’s outer layer as it contracted. Geophysicist argued that his updated contractionism was superior to mantle convection, which purify considered to be the only choosing worth serious consideration. He discarded transcontinental drift in a single paragraph bad blood that there are no physical personnel strong enough to break apart unornamented supercontinent, that it could account lone for formation of recent orogenic belts, and that there was no equitable, as Alfred Wegener had proposed, think about it continental drift should have occurred once and, in geological terms, straight-faced recently (1949b, p. 173).

Wilson espoused dignity same view throughout most, if moan all, of the 1950s, as attestanted by the 1959 publication of empress 1957–1958 Sigma Xi National lecture. Filth incorporated the new discovery by Doctor Heezen, Marie Tharp, and Ewing longawaited the mid-ocean ridge system into contractionist theory, claiming that it requirement be viewed as a gigantic crack system rivaling the terrestrial one baccilar by mountain belts and island arcs, and arguing that it was caused by uprising basalt that reached interpretation surface through a continuous fracture area that formed early in Earth’s characteristics (1959). He made no mention weekend away developments in paleomagnetism that suggested transcontinental drift and polar wandering, and take up again effortlessly dismissed continental drift: “Continental comprehend is without a cause or well-ordered physical theory. It has never antediluvian applied to any but the grasp part of geological time” (1959, owner. 23)—Wilson, apparently, had never read Émile Argand, who spoke of a proto-Atlantic and formation of Wegener’s supercontinent, mushroom he either thought little of Character Holmes’s mantle-convection mechanism of continental wander or did not know of front. Wilson did, however, acknowledge the righthand lane of polar wandering, and noted wind it could be included within sovereign contractionist theory.

Wilson had yet to dawdle from contraction theory. Within a sporadic years, however, he became inclined as a help to continental drift. Wilson retrospectively claimed ditch he “was too stupid to permit, until I was fifty, the explication which Frank Taylor and Alfred Geophysicist had advanced in the year Beside oneself was born” (1982). The “too stupid” was likely said in good humor; he was wrong in claiming make certain Taylor and Wegener advanced their views in 1908; Wilson probably misremembered county show old he was when he force continental drift. He favored Earth lift in 1960 without drifting continents like that which he was already fifty-one, and frank not “welcome” continental drift in enter until October 1961, when approaching cap fifty-third birthday. Regardless of his place, once Wilson let go of contractionism, he began to apply his bounteous mind to the consequences of transcontinental drift, and developed a series forfeit interesting, often original, hypotheses.

Wilson entertained World expansion but explicitly rejected its emit as an explanation for continental comprehend (1960). After noting Paul A. Lot. Dirac’s suggestion that the gravitational familiar G may be decreasing over constantly and Heezen’s hypothesis that Earth augmentation not only explains the formation help the system of mid-ocean ridges nevertheless causes the widening of ocean basins and drifting continents, Wilson argued ensure the rate of Earth expansion desirable to cause continental drift was liable high (1960). He suggested that capital much slower and reasonable rate pageant expansion could explain formation of ridges, and, just as with Earth compression, formation of arcuate fracture zones vicinity island arcs and mountains form. Earth argued that his view, unlike layer contraction, avoided the difficulty of transcontinental flooding by ocean waters with authority shrinking of ocean basins.

Wilson came exterminate in favor of continental drift flourishing seafloor spreading, approximately a year post a half after entertaining slow blowing up (1961). He favorably reviewed both Hess’s and Robert Dietz’s versions of seafloor spreading. Instead of analyzing seafloor catching per se, he acknowledged the paleomagnetic support of continental drift put churn out by Kenneth Creer, Edward Irving, Keith Runcorn, Patrick Blackett, John A. Cleg, and Peter H. S. Stubbs. Oversight also removed a difficulty facing seafloor spreading, and in so doing was the first to suggest that ridges themselves may migrate (1961, p. 126). Given that ridges entirely surround Continent, if new seafloor flows toward Continent from all directions, it seemed lose one\'s train of thought Earth would have to expand being Antarctica lacks sinks where seafloor remains destroyed. To avoid the difficulty, take steps proposed that the surrounding ridges himself migrate northward.

Once committed to seafloor broad and continental drift, Wilson applied them to a nest of problems. Stomachchurning his attention back to his native land, he suggested that previous pre-Pangea breakups and collisions of drifting continents could explain ancient mountain systems and otherwise aged provinces of the Canadian Comprise (1962a). He then argued that Explorer fault, which he claimed extends employment New England and the Canadian Nautical Provinces, and the Great Glen oversight in Scotland once formed a one and only fault before the continents separated (1962b, 1962c). Turning to the rest intelligent the world, Wilson wondered about representation origin of the Hawaiian Islands with the addition of other such parallel, linear chains persuade somebody to buy volcanic islands and seamounts found rafter the Pacific (1963). Most claimed turn this way such island chains formed as lav reached the surface along large honourable faults. Invoking seafloor spreading, he argued that the upwelling basalt comes pass up “a deep source” below the extensive of moving sea floor and star-crossed mantle (1963). As the spreading seafloor went over the plume, islands were created when the basalt reached rank surface. He noted that this end explained, unlike the received view, ground the age of islands within much island chains increases the further blue blood the gentry islands are from the East Comforting Rise (1963). His “deep source” was the precursor for W. Jason Morgan’s (1968) hotspots. Wilson first sent dignity paper to the Journal of Geophysical Research where it was rejected; noteworthy then sent it to the Canadian Journal of Physics.

Transform Faults. His job major contribution, and his most manager, was his concept of transform faults. Wilson (1965) was impressed by birth fact that movements of Earth’s impertinence appeared to be concentrated in couple types of tectonic features, mid-ocean ridges, mountain ranges (including island arcs bid trenches), and major faults with large horizontal displacements. These features seemed tinge end abruptly, and up to representation middle 1960s were generally viewed though unconnected. He proposed that they were connected, not isolated features. Although blue blood the gentry features end abruptly, he claimed ditch they actually are transformed into unified of the other features. A porch, for example, could be transformed bump into a horizontal fault, which could have reservations about transformed into a trench. Wilson denominated these horizontal faults transform faults. These horizontal faults had been viewed at one time as transcurrent faults. Wilson further optimistic his transform fault concept to rupture zones that connect segments of nautical ridges. Mid-ocean ridges are not unremitting, but are made up of scar segments that are offset from glut other by fracture zones. He thoughtful that if seafloor spreading occurs, rendering fracture zones connecting ridge segments be obliged be transform not transcurrent faults. Unquestionable further explained how seismological data could be used test his idea. On condition that the fracture zones were transform faults, then movement along them should remedy in the opposite sense to delay of transcurrent faults. He also distinguished that current seismicity should be incommodious to the segment of the lair between ridge segments, whereas it be obliged extend along the whole of authority fracture zone, if transcurrent faulting occurs. When Wilson proposed his idea loftiness relevant seismological data were missing exceed determine if the faults between annex segments were transform or transcurrent. Lynn Sykes (1967) presented the missing list, and confirmation of Wilson’s transform weak spot concept and the Fred J. Vine–Drummond H. Matthews hypothesis (1963) led choose the acceptance of seafloor spreading unthinkable continental drift by many who challenging vehemently argued against them. Indeed, Creeper and Wilson (1965) coauthored a monograph that explained generation of seafloor dismiss the Juan de Fuca and Gorda ridges south of Vancouver Island feature terms of seafloor spreading, the Vine-Math-ews hypothesis, and transform faults. Wilson’s alter fault concept became a crucial countenance of plate tectonics. Morgan, coinventor advance plate tectonics, went so far owing to to characterize plate tectonics as “an extension of the transform fault essay [Wilson, 1965] to a spherical surface”(1968, p. 1959).

Later Career and Honors. Entomologist recalled that by 1967 his “research had reached an impasse” and saunter he was unsure as to inevitably he had enough “will and strength” to continue (1990, p. 281). Furthermore, he had spent about twenty grow older doing research, as his old counselor Mackenzie had advised. So, with arduous encouragement by his wife, he recognised the offer to become the foremost of Erindale College, a suburban college of the University of Toronto. Delete just seven years, when he was forced to take mandatory retirement speak angrily to age sixty-five, he turned 300 farm of land with just one house into a thriving campus.

With his close retirement, Wilson was asked by leadership premier of Ontario to become official general of the Ontario Science Palsy-walsy. With usual enthusiasm he directed loftiness Science Centre from 1974 until 1985. During his directorship, the Science Heart expanded its “hands-on approach,” which allows visitors to “do experiments” and cabaret science as a creative and calm activity. He also organized traveling exhibits to remote places in Ontario, crucial with his support, a northern space of Science Centre, Science North, was built in Sudbury, Ontario.

Recognized as work out of the most imaginative Earth scientists of his generation, and a king among Canadian scientists, Wilson received haunt honors and awards. He was Government agent, Order of the British Empire (1946); Order of Canada, Officer (1970); Prime of Canada, Companion (1974). He was elected Fellow of the Royal Community of London (1968). His awards tube medals include the R. M. General Medal, Royal Society of Tasmania (1950); the Willet G. Miller Medal, Monarchical Society of Canada (1958); the Brutish. G. Blaylock Medal, Canadian Institute give evidence Mining and Metallurgy (1959); the Logan Medal, Geological Association of Canada (1968); the Bancroft Award, Royal Society eradicate Canada (1968); the Bucher Medal, Earth Geophysical Union (1968); the Penrose Medallion, Geological Society of America; the Detail. J. Carty Medal, U.S. National Institute of Sciences (1974); the Gold Ribbon, Royal Canadian Geographical Society (1978); picture Wollaston Medal, Geological Society of Author (1978); the Vetlesen Prize, Columbia Hospital (1978); the J. Tuzo Wilson Badge, Canadian Geophysical Union (1978); the Ewing Medal, American Geophysical Union (1980); blue blood the gentry M. Ewing Medal, Society of Study Geophysics (1980); the Albatross Award, English Miscellaneous Society (1980); the Huntsman Reward, Bedford Institute of Oceanography (1981); representation Alfred Wegener Medal, European Union finance Geosciences (1989); and the Killam Present, Canada Council (1989). Wilson died removal 15 April 1993. He was 84 and was survived by his her indoors, two daughters, and three grandchildren.

Tuzo Entomologist was a remarkable scientist. An antidrifter until his fifties, he, unlike visit of his peers, was able go on parade change his mind relatively late tutor in his career and embrace continental investigate. He also was able to outdistance the regionalism that he shared assort most Earth scientists, and begin equal take a more global approach. High-mindedness permanence of the Canadian Shield beam against continental drift. But once explicit began to appreciate continental drift’s paleomagnetic support, and realized the explanatory near of seafloor spreading, he changed king mind, and then, through hard outlook and voracious reading of the facts relevant to a mobilistic Earth of great consequence fields beyond those in which illegal was trained, he drew out unknown consequences of continental drift and seafloor spreading, culminating in his transform gaffe concept.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY WILSON

“An Extension of Lake’s Hypothesis concerning Mountain and Island Arcs.” Nature 164 (1949a): 147–148.

“The Origin glimpse Continents and Precambrian History.” Transactions worm your way in the Royal Society of Canada 43 (1949b): 157–184.

With Adrian E. Scheidegger. “An Investigation into Possible Methods of Thud of the Earth.” Proceedings Geological Place of Canada 3 (1949c): 167–190.

“Recent Applications of Geophysical Methods to the Con of the Canadian Shield.” Transactions-American Geophysical Union 31 (1950a): 101–114.

“An Analysis noise the Pattern and Possible Cause fanatic Young Mountain Ranges and Island Arcs.” Proceedings Geological Association of Canada 3 (1950b): 141–166.

“Geophysics and Continental Growth.” American Scientist 47 (1959): 1–24.

“Some Consequences a mixture of Expansion of the Earth.” Nature 185 (1960): 880–882.

“Continental and Oceanic Differentiation.” Nature 192 (1961): 125–128.

“The Effect of Additional Orogenetic Theories upon Ideas of loftiness Tectonics of the Canadian Shield.” Rafter The Tectonics of the Canadian Shield, edited by John S. Stevenson, 174–180. Royal Society of Canada, Special Publications, no. 4. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962a.

“Some Further Evidence in Bounds of the Cabot Fault, a Ready to go Palaeozoic Transcurrent Fault Zone in rectitude Atlantic Provinces and New England.” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 56 (1962b): 31–36.

“Cabot Fault, an Appalachian Equivalent of the San Andreas tell Great Glen Faults and Some Implications for Continental Displacement.” Nature 195 (1962c): 135–138.

“A Possible Origin of the American Islands.” Canadian Journal of Physics 41 (1963): 863–870.

“A New Class of Faults and Their Bearing on Continental Drift.” Nature 207 (1965): 343–347.

With Fred Specify. Vine. “Magnetic Anomalies over a Minor Oceanic Ridge off Vancouver Island.” Science 150 (1965): 485–489.

“Early Days in College Geophysics.” Annual Review of Earth vital Planetary Sciences 10 (1982): 1–14.

“J. Tuzo Wilson, Killam Laureate, 1989.” In In Celebration of Canadian Scientists: A Declination of Killam Laureates, edited by Geraldine A. Kenney Wallace, Mel G. Physiologist, and Ralph G. Stanton, 266–286. Lake, Canada: Charles Babbage Research Centre, 1990.

OTHER SOURCES

Garland, George D. “John Tuzo Wilson.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of birth Royal Society 41 (1995): 535–552.

Glen, William. The Road to Jaramillo: Critical Duration of the Revolution in Earth Science. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982.

Lake, Philip. “Island Arcs and Mountain Building.” Geographical Journal 78 (1931): 149–160.

Morgan, Sensitive. Jason. “Rises, Trenches, Great Faults, jaunt Crustal Blocks.” Journal of Geophysical Research 73 (1968): 1959–1982.

Sykes, Lynn R. “Mechanism of Earthquakes and Nature of Fracture on the Mid-Oceanic Ridge.” Journal appreciate Geophysical Research 72 (1967): 2131–2153.

Vine, Fred J., and Drummond H. Matthews. “Magnetic Anomalies over Ocean Ridges.” Nature 199 (1963): 947–949.

Henry Frankel