J. Tuzo Wilson

He is one of the 2016 inductees into Legends Row: Mississauga Walk of Fame.

Wilson was an avid traveller and took a large number of photographs during his travels to many destinations, including European countries, parts of the then USSR, China, the southern Pacific, Africa, and to both polar regions. Although many of his photos are geological—details of rocks and their structures or panoramas of large formations—the bulk of his photos are of the places, activities and people that he saw on his travels: landscapes, city views, monuments, sites, instruments, vehicles, flora and fauna, occupations and people.

He retired in 1986 and died in Toronto on April 15, 1993.

He is known for his work on The Underground Movie (1972).

John Tuzo Wilson was president (1957–1960) of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG). In 1969, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to the rank of Companion of that order in 1974. Wilson was awarded the John J. Carty Award from the National Academy of Sciences in 1975. In 1978, he was awarded the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London and a Gold Medal by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He also served as honorary vice president of the RCGS. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Canada, and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was the principal of Erindale College at the University of Toronto and was the host of the television series The Planet of Man. He was elected president-elect (1978–1980) and president (1980–1982) of the American Geophysical Union. He also served as the director general of the Ontario Science Centre from 1974 to 1985. He and his plate tectonic theory are commemorated on the grounds of the Centre by a giant "immovable" spike indicating the amount of continental drift since Wilson's birth.

After the war, in 1946, he was appointed the first Professor of Geophysics at the University of Toronto. In 1967 he became Principal of the university. In 1974 he left to become the Director General of the Ontario Science Centre. In 1983 he became Chancellor of York University, Toronto.

After completing his studies in 1936, Wilson joined the Canadian Geological Survey as a government geologist. This was interrupted by the Second World War during which he served with the Royal Canadian Engineers, serving in Europe and reaching the rank of Colonel. He was involved in Operation Musk Ox.

He became one of the first people in Canada to receive a degree in geophysics, graduating from Trinity College at the University of Toronto in 1930. He obtained a second (BA) degree from St. John's College, Cambridge in 1932 and then a doctorate (ScD). He then pursued further graduate studies as Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. in geology in 1936 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "The Geology of the Mill creek - Stillwater Area, Montana."

J. Tuzo Wilson was born on October 24, 1908 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.