Theodore Allen Wilson was born September 27, 1940 in Evansville, Indiana. He received all his degrees from Indiana University: BA with honors and distinction in 1962, MA in 1963, and PhD in 1966. His dessertation topic was "Atlantic Meeting: The Roosevelt-Churchill Conference of August 1941."

The same year that he received his doctorate, Wilson joined the faculty of the Department of History at the University of Kansas, reaching full Professor status in 1973. He has held several visiting professorships, including at the University of Denver in Colorado; University College in Dublin, Ireland; the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; Leicester University in England; and as a senior research professor at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C.

From 1973-1975 and from 2007-2008, he served as the director of graduate studies in the History Department at KU, and from 1976-1979 he served as associate dean for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. From 1979-1981 he was chair of the History Department (he later served again as acting chair in 2006), and from 1983-1989 he served as director of KU's Hall Center for the Humanities. He has also served as the director for the KU Summer Institute in Britain, in both 1984 and 1997.

Wilson has been a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (1972-1973), a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Younger Humanist Fellow (1971), and received a Fulbright to spend a year as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History at University College in Dublin, Ireland, in 1995-1996. Wilson received the William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence in 1997.

Wilson's research interests have focused on United States 20th century political, miltary, and diplomatic history. He has been interested in the intersections between politics, national security policies, and foreign affairs particularly in the middle of the 20th century, and in more recent years his focus as been on military dimensions of World War II. Wilson has taught a wide variety of history courses, particularly focused on WWII, military history, and U.S. diplomacy. He has published numerous books, articles, and essays, and he has edited or co-edited several books, as well as serving as general editor of the University Press of Kansas' Modern War Studies series.