On July 24, 1965 the British journal Nature published an article that revolutionized the way
we all understand the Earth. The paper was written by the Canadian scientist John Tuzo
Wilson, a man gifted with stunning vitality and extraordinary intuition. Scientific American
called Wilson's explanation of the new theory of plate tectonics "one of the century's
five major advances in science.
Wilson was born in Ottawa, the son of a Scottish engineer father and an adventurous,
mountain-climbing mother. When in the mid-1920s he switched majors in university from
physics to geology, his teachers were appalled. Physics was then in its Golden Age,
uncovering the secrets of the universe. Geology was considered a field as intellectually
respectable as collecting postage stamps.
Not least among geology's problems was the complete lack of understanding of the processes
that create the Earth. How do continents form? What causes volcanoes or earthquakes? If the
continents have always been where they are today, as everyone believed, why do distant parts
of the world, especially South America and Africa, look like matching pieces in a jigsaw
puzzle?
The idea that the continents actually move was first considered early in the 20th century.
German meteorologist Alfred Wegener suggested that the continents "drifted, but no one took
him seriously because he could not explain why. Opposition to the idea was universally
vitriolic.
Geologists were never going to solve these mysteries, no matter how much time they spent
with magnetometers, microscopes and hammers. They needed a new science and a theory that
would explain the Earth. "It was the bluff, genial, approachable, and down-to-earth
University of Toronto professor J. Tuzo Wilson who ... in essence created the new science,
writes Simon Winchester in his book Krakatoa.
Wilson developed his theory of "plate tectonics after several brilliant insights. First was
the curious case of the Hawaiian Islands. Flying over the islands he saw something that the
ancient Hawaiians had always suspected. While the big island of Hawaii itself was still a
furnace of volcanic activity, the more distant island of Niihau was half dead, and clearly
much older. Wilson deduced that there must be a stationary "hot spot over which the islands
moved. The mantle and crust along the chain of islands must be moving!
Wilson's second realization was a true Eureka! It came after he was experimenting with paper
and a pair of scissors while on sabbatical in Cambridge. "I have discovered a new class of
fault he declared to his colleagues. "Rubbish" was the response. Wilson would just grin and
show the skeptics a simple folded paper version of his new kind of fault by opening and
closing his folded paper. "I was seeing something profoundly new and important, wrote John
Dewey afterwards, "and that I was talking to a very clever and original man.
Wilson's new kind of fault explained why the great ridges down the centre of the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans were incised by dozens of deep gashes. He gave the name "transform fault
to the new phenomenon. He made a paper and crayon diagram, cut it out and kept it in his
wallet ready to show to anyone. Anyone who saw the impromptu demonstration knew that he was
right.
"Many geologists have maintained that movements of the Earth's crust are concentrated in
mobile belts, which may take the form of mountains, mid-ocean ridges or major faults, wrote
Wilson, "this article suggests that these features are not isolated, that few came to dead
ends, but that they are connected into a continuous network of mobile belts around the Earth
which divide the surface into several large rigid plates.
This was Wilson's proof of the theory of plate tectonics. The day of believing that the
continents had always been where they stand now was done. It was an incredibly exciting time
for scientists. They could now see the Earth whole, with the oceans coming apart at the
seams and the crust and upper mantle spreading across the ocean floors.
Wilson's distinguished career continued even after he quit university. As director of the
Ontario Science Centre, he famously had "Please Touch signs posted on the exhibits. He
taught his new theory in more than 100 countries, taking time off to sail his Chinese junk
in Georgian Bay and to climb the occasional mountain.