He was the eldest son of civil engineer Norman Foster Wilson (1869–1948) and Henrietta Gwendolen Meryon, née Harris (b.

After the end of the war, Wilson went to McGill University, Montreal, Canada, to study for a degree in mining engineering and geology.

[4] As a student there, Wilson wrote a ‘theme song for structural geologists’ which he performed at the 1926 University of Wisconsin Geology Club Banquet, to the tune of Bonny Dundee.

The stress is a force that we never quite see While the strain shows in such things as schistosity[7] Wilson graduated in 1926, and worked briefly in the mining industries in Canada, Yugoslavia, Russia and Africa, before heading to Imperial College, London, to study for a PhD.

[1] Wilson taught for a while at the University of Reading, and returned to Imperial College in 1939 as a lecturer in structural geology, teaching the concepts he had learned in Wisconsin.

Wilson was made an honorary member of the Geologists' Association in 1975,[15] and was awarded the Andre Dumont medal of the Geological Society of Belgium.

He published a book during his retirement, which was based on a paper he had originally presented to the Geological Society of Belgium twenty years earlier.