J. Tuzo Wilson

take a Ph.D. in geology at a leading uni- scale thinking had prepared him to take versity in the United States. Tuzo was geology forward in a dramatic fashion. Rock Stars accepted at Harvard and MIT but chose to Tuzo’s mind had a fascinating way of enroll at Princeton because “it offered the solving problems. Unlike most physicists, most money, and because Professor R.M. who find their solutions via mathematics, J. Tuzo Wilson Field said that he hoped to start teaching Tuzo solved problems almost entirely with geophysics there.” At Princeton, Tuzo met visual images and then presented the solu- future giants Harry Hess, Maurice Ewing tions in extremely clear prose. He had a Derek York, Physics Department, Univer- (visiting from Lehigh), and George Wool- remarkable ability to look into the heart of sity of Toronto lard, but Field “failed to bring anyone to extreme complexity and see simplicity itself. Princeton to teach us geophysics.” So the The nearest mind that I can think of to young Canadian completed his Ph.D. at compare with Tuzo’s was that of Michael Tuzo Wilson lived for ideas, and those Princeton by carrying out geological map- Faraday who, instead of integrating differ- he created were weird and wonderful. ping in the Beartooth Mountains under the ential equations to calculate the electric Many were wrong, but some were mar- nominal supervision of Professor Taylor field, imagined a charged particle to be an velously right. And, until his death in Thom. During this thesis work, he made octopus with tentacle-like lines of force 1993, he never stopped creating ideas. the first recorded climb of Mount Hague, reaching out into the space around it. The Early Years shining as his mother had in the mountains. To solve the problem of the origin of With the outbreak of World War II, the Hawaiian Islands, for example, Tuzo He was the first child, born on October Tuzo left the job he’d had at the GSC imagined someone lying on his back on 24, 1908, in Ottawa, to the former Henri- since graduating from Princeton and the bottom of a shallow stream, blowing etta Tuzo and John Armistead Wilson. His joined the Canadian Army as an engineer. bubbles to the surface through a straw. mother’s name, Tuzo, came from her He spent four years overseas before return- The bursting bubbles were the Hawaiian father’s distant Angevin Huguenot ances- ing to Canada as a colonel and director of Islands, and they lay in a line because they tors, who landed in Virginia in the seven- operational research. In this capacity, he were swept along the surface by the mov- teenth century. Henrietta was a remark- organized Exercise Musk Ox, which he ing stream. Thirty years later, leading geo- able and adventurous woman who loved described in 1982 as “the first and still the physical theorists use supercomputers to mountaineering. Mount Tuzo in western most extensive motorized expedition ever solve horrendousequations thatTuzo”solved” Canada was named after her because she to cross the Canadian Arctic.” in the visualizing region of his brain. and Christian Bohre were the first to scale Following his demobilization, Tuzo was Tuzo’s great paper describing this, “A its peak. She had met her future husband, appointed professor of geophysics at the Possible Origin of the Hawaiian Islands,” John Wilson, while attending the camp of University of Toronto in 1946. In the next the Alpine Club of Canada near Banff in 14 years, he built a considerable reputa- Alberta. John, a Scottish engineer, was to tion, clarifying the structures of the Cana- play an important role in the development dian Shield with the help of the newly of civil aviation in Canada. Thus, a love of flowering field of geochronology. Here, the outdoor life and world travel was in- he applied ideas initially derived locally, stilled in their son, John Tuzo Wilson. perhaps, to Earth at large. He pointed out When Tuzo was 17, he had the good that the age divisions he could see in the fortune to become field assistant to the Canadian Shield were probably features of famous Everest mountaineer Noell Odell all the major shields of Earth. He wrote who, recalled Tuzo, “showed me the won- about continental growth, and not merely ders of field geology.” Tuzo enrolled in for the North American continent. He physics at the University of Toronto, but adopted Jeffreys’ theory of mountain he soon switched to a double major in building on a contracting Earth and rejected physics and geology, and in 1930, he con- the idea of continental drift. By the late sidered himself to be Canada’s first-ever 1950s, Tuzo was famous but also contro- graduate in geophysics. versial—something of a maverick and a A scholarship then took Tuzo to Cam- promoter of ideas, some said, that made bridge University, ostensibly for graduate them uncomfortable. Not only that, the work in geophysics. However, he quickly contraction hypothesis he promoted so found that the university had no clearly strongly was turning out to be inadequate. organized department, and, after being baffled by Harold Jeffreys’ high-powered mathematical lectures, he decided to take The Climactic Years It was at the University of Toronto that an assortment of lectures in geology and Tuzo reacted brilliantly by admitting to physics that appealed to him, and he com- himself that he was wrong about a con- pleted a second B.A. degree. tracting Earth and by wondering if Dietz, This was followed by a stint at the Geo- Hess, Irving, and others might be right logical Survey of Canada (GSC), where about continental drift. And remarkably Tuzo worked on Sudbury rocks with the quickly, at an age (about 50) when very GSC’s director, W.H. Collins. Collins, pre- few scientists have come up with great sumably responding to Tuzo’s tremendous ideas, Tuzo recognized that Earth was a drive and ability, recommended that he J. Tuzo Wilson in his 80s. highly mobile place. Years of global, large- Photo courtesy of Delroy Curling. 24 SEPTEMBER 2001, GSA TODAY was rejected by the leading American geo- ocean ridges and found Tuzo’s predictions Derek! Tuzo. Nearly done now!” Four physical journal in 1963 on the grounds were correct in every case. His announce- months later, I received in Capetown a that it was completely at variance with the ment of this went a long way in convincing message that on April 15, 1993, he had latest seismic studies of the region. Unde- people that continental drift had not only died of a heart attack. terred, he sent it to the Canadian Journal of occurred in the past 200 m.y., but was Extraordinarily powerful—mentally and Physics, where it was immediately published going on under our feet today, at the rate physically—to the end, Tuzo had in later because, I suspect, the editors didn’t know at which our toenails are growing. years been happy and successful as princi- what else to do with anything so devoid Interestingly, in his very last paper, pal of Erindale College at the University of of mathematics. which appears not to have been pub- Toronto, where he and his wife, Isabel, His second great, yet simple, idea was lished, he merges his beautiful Hawaiian entertained thousands of students and visi- that of transform faults. Again, Tuzo’s plume idea with geophysical exploration. tors. After stepping down from this posi- approach was visual and non-numerical. He gave the preprint to me in late 1992, tion, he was, at 65, appointed director- And yet it was devastatingly definitive in just before I was to leave Toronto for six general of the internationally renowned what it predicted. It did not give us an months. In his irrepressible style, Tuzo Ontario Science Centre, a position in equation, such as E=mc2, or say that the entitled it, “On Migrating Mountains and a which he reveled, with his magnetic per- magnetic field near a wire is proportional Revolution in Earth Sciences.” sonality and gift for popularization. to the current flowing through it. Tuzo’s Among many other ideas, he pointed transform fault concept said to earth scien- out in the paper an association between Further Reading tists that they were living in a looking- bonanza gold deposits in the United States Garland, G.D., 1995, John Tuzo Wilson: Biographical glass world. For earthquakes occurring and rising plumes, which he claimed memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, v. 41, p. 535–552. underwater and in the middles of oceans, underlay the continent. The manuscript I Wilson, J. T., 1982, Early days in university physics: Annual he predicted that the rocks everybody have is incomplete, but in the very sen- Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, v. 10, p. 1–14. believed had moved right to left during tence where it halts is contained the Wilson, J.T., 1963, A possible origin of the Hawaiian Islands: Canadian Journal of Physics, v. 41, p. 863–870. the earthquake had moved left to right, quintessence of Tuzo Wilson: the word Wilson, J.T., 1965, A new class of faults and their bearing and vice versa. This was a wonderful geo- “ideas.” Said he, “These great faults may on continental drift: Nature, v. 207, p. 343–347. metric test for the existence of continental or may not have plumes associated with Wilson, J.T., 1966, Did the Atlantic close and then re-open?: drift and plate tectonics. If the rocks moved them, but the ideas gained in Nevada sug- Nature, v. 211, p.

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