John Tuzo Wilson,
Ph.D ,
CC ,
OBE ,
D.Sc ,
FRS ,
FRSC ,
FRSE (
October 24,
1908–
April 15,
1993) was a
Canadian geophysicist and
geologist who achieved worldwide acclaim for his contributions to the theory of
plate tectonics.Plate tectonics is the idea that the rigid outer layers of the Earth (
crust and part of the
upper mantle), the
lithosphere, are broken up into numerous 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 slowly in a northwesterly direction over a fixed
hotspot, 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). His name was given to a young Canadian
submarine volcano called the
Tuzo Wilson Seamounts, which is a hotspot volcano at Coordinates = . The
Wilson cycle of seabed expansion and contraction (also conversely called the
Supercontinent cycle) bears his name.
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