UNIT

9The geosphere

Biology and Geology 4. Secondary Education

TUZO WILSON

UNIT

9Tuzo Wilson

Biology and Geology 4. Secondary Education

• John Tuzo Wilson (Ottawa, 1908 – 1993), a geologist and geophysicist, was one of the leading proponents of the theory of plate tectonics.

• Wilson was not in favour of the theory of continental drift, proposed by Wegener in 1912, but he made many trips that made it possible for him to discover geophysical evidence that complemented and expanded on this theory.

•  He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1930 and completed his PhD at Princeton University in 1936. In 1944, he directed a research programme in the Arctic and soon after he became a lecturer in geophysics at the University of Toronto, which he would have a connection with throughout almost all of his academic life.

UNIT

9Tuzo Wilson

Biology and Geology 4. Secondary Education

•  In 1966, he published a study in the journal Nature, entitled "Did the Atlantic Close and then Re-Open?”

• In this article, he proposed that the Atlantic had closed and had then re-opened, leaving part of Europe stuck to America and a strip of America joined to Europe. This explained the presence of ancient European fossils on the coasts of New England and Canada and American fossils from the same period that were found in Norway and Scotland.

• In his well-known Wilson cycle, he explains, in a well-organised manner, the process of opening and closing of the ocean basins and the fragmentation and subsequent joining of the continents, which result in the formation of mountain ranges. The cycle sums up everything that happens on the constructive and destructive margins of the lithosphere.