A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in Marine SciencePast Recipient, John Tuzo Wilson(1981) |
||||||
| Home | ||||||
| • About the Bedford Institute of Oceanography • The A. G. Huntsman Foundation • Brief Biography of A. G. Huntsman |
|
| Last Modified: 2009-09-18
|
|
||
The
continuing contribution of John Tuzo
Wilson, the fourth recipient of the A.G.
HUNTSMAN Award, is well-known to all
geoscientists. Because of his
encyclopaedic knowledge of geology and
his innovative imagination he played a
key role in the development of the
concepts of plate tectonics and sea-floor
spreading with such prescient ideas as
mantle plumes or hot spots and the
mechanics of Transform Faults, now basic
to modern geodynamic understanding. His
proposal that oceans may have opened and
closed more than once was adopted by
geologists working on land as well as at
sea and is commonly referred to as the
Wilson Cycle. Although he has spent
considerable time travelling, it is
perhaps appropriate that for over 30
years he was professor of geophysics at
the University of Toronto where his
ability to draw the salient information
from a vast reservoir of geological
observations, and to clearly explain it,
has influenced an entire generation of
geologists and geophysicists. He has used
his abilities well, world-wide, in
interpreting geology to the layman and
stimulating the professional. Lately
these powers have been harnessed also at
the popular and fascinating Ontario
Science Centre. His honours and awards
have been many, including the Vetlesan
Prize from Columbia University and the
Maurice Ewing Medal of the American
Geophysical Union; however, it is
appropriate that Canada's major marine
geoscience institute officially
recognizes John Tuzo Wilson's substantial
contribution in this field by presenting
him with the A.G. HUNTSMAN Award. .