Sir Daniel Wilson FSA (Scot) FRSE LLD (January 5, 1816 – August 6, 1892) was a Scottish-born Canadian archaeologist, ethnologist and author. He served as the third president of the University of Toronto from 1880 to 1892, a role known as president of University College between 1853 and 1901.
Life
Wilson was born at 55 Potterow in Edinburgh on 3 January 1816, the son of Archibald Wilson and his wife, Janet Aitken. His father is listed in directories as a book-binder, but some records state he was a wine-dealer. He was educated at the Royal High School. He was apprenticed as an engraver around 1830 then went to London, and worked in the studio of J. M. W. Turner. His skills as a watercolour painter came back into play much later in his career.
Wilson returned to Edinburgh in 1842, and was appointed Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1845. He corresponded with Christian Jürgensen Thomsen and J. J. A. Worsaae, who had established the exhibition of the prehistoric material in the Danish national museum in Copenhagen in terms of the Three-age system – the succession of a Stone Age by a Bronze Age and an Iron Age. He organized the display of the Society's museum after the same chronological scheme, the first to emulate the Copenhagen museum.
In 1845 he is listed as a "printseller and artist's colourman" with premises at 25 Hanover Street and living at 32 Broughton Place.
In 1848 Wilson published Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, of which the chief value lies in the numerous illustrations, done by himself It was an important record of the many historic buildings that were at risk or were being lost in the rapid development of central Edinburgh. In 1851 he published The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, which introduced the word prehistoric into the English archaeological vocabulary – he probably translated it from the Danish word "forhistorie" as used by Thomsen and Worsaae.
