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John Tuzo Wilson, CC, OBE, FRS, FRSC, FRSE 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, 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 which shifted to the northwest 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. His name was given to two young Canadian submarine volcanoes called the Tuzo Wilson Seamounts. The Wilson cycle of seabed expansion and contraction bears his name.
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