| Honorific Prefix: | Dr. |
| Harold 'Hank' Williams | |
| Honorific Suffix: | MSc PhD FRSC |
| Birth Date: | 14 March 1934 |
| Birth Place: | St. John's, Newfoundland |
| Death Place: | St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada |
| Nationality: | Canadian |
| Field: | Geology |
| Work Institution: | Geological Survey of Canada Memorial University of Newfoundland |
| Alma Mater: | Memorial University of Newfoundland University of Toronto |
| Thesis Title: | A petrographic study of the Metamorphic rocks of the Chisel lake area, northern Manitoba |
| Thesis Url: | http://search.library.utoronto.ca/details?935345&uuid=d8adb8e0-5228-420f-bd73-7102cd597a8c |
| Thesis Year: | 1961 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | J. Tuzo Wilson |
| Known For: | Tectonics of the Appalachian Mountains |
| Prizes: | Governor General's Medal (1956) Past President's Medal (1976) Douglas Medal (1980) Miller Medal (1987) Logan Medal (1988) |
Harold Williams MSc PhD FRSC (14 March 1934 – 28 September 2010[1]) was one of the premier field geologists in the history of Newfoundland geology and the foremost expert on the Appalachian Mountains of North America. An expert on the evolution and tectonic development of mountain belts, Williams advanced the theory of colliding super-continents in the 1960s and 1970s by helping to transform the notion of continental drift into the theory of plate tectonics.[2]
Williams was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and attended Memorial University of Newfoundland earning a diploma in Engineering and a B.Sc degree (1956) and a M.Sc degree (1958) on a Dominion Command scholarship. He earned a Ph.D from the University of Toronto in 1961.
He thereafter joined the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), where he gained the reputation of being an expert field geologist and outstanding scientist. He left the GSC in 1968 and joined the faculty at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he was the first to receive the prestigious title of University Research Professor (1984) and the first to be appointed Alexander Murray Professor (1990).[3] He was the first to win both the Past President’s Medal and the Logan Medal of the Geological Association of Canada.
He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada at age 38, a very rare accolade, and 15 years later was awarded the Miller Medal by its Academy of Science. First winner of the R.J.W. Douglas Medal of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, he was also the first geoscientist to be awarded an Isaac Walton Killam Memorial Fellowship and the first scientist of any kind to hold this award for four full years. He has over 250 publications to his credit and for several years in the past three decades has been the most cited Canadian geoscientist in the world.
Williams was among the first to describe the evidence for the existence of the Iapetus Ocean, the predecessor of the modern Atlantic Ocean. A sampling of these rocks is preserved and protected in Gros Morne National Park of western Newfoundland, which has qualified for UNESCO World Heritage Site recognition under his advocacy. Williams is perhaps best known for producing the world's first tectonic lithofacies map and the first geological map of the entire Appalachian Mountains in the U.S. and Canada in 1978.