| Description | Papers and correspondence, 1846-1974, of David Meredith Seares Watson and his family, largely comprising biographical material and family papers, scientific correspondence, and photographs, also including a few Exchequer receipts, 1568-1622.
Biographical material, 1886-1974, includes Watson's birth certificate, 1886; documentation, including certificates and correspondence, of Watson's career, honours and awards over a period of forty years, including election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, 1922, the award of its Darwin medal, 1942, and the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society, 1965; correspondence about the Directorship of the British Museum (Natural History), 1937; correspondence about the presentation album on his retirement from the Jodrell Chair, 1951; correspondence and papers relating to his final retirement from research, 1965; obituaries, 1973; F R Parrington and T S Westoll's memoir of Watson from 'Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society', 1974; an account of Watson's early days and family background by his daughter Janet Vida; recollections by his research assistant Joyce Townsend; Watson's curriculum vita and bibliography.
Family papers include the birth certificate of Watson's father, David, 1846, correspondence with his wife Mary, 1888, and a letter of condolence to Mrs Watson on her husband's death, 1899; diaries of Mary Watson, 1881, 1885; birth certificate of their daughter Constance, 1888, letters from Constance to her brother David Meredith Seares Watson, 1905-1909 and undated; papers relating to Katharine Margarite Watson (née Parker), Watson's wife, including her birth certificate, 1891, marriage certificate, 1917, death certificate, 1969, and various correspondence; papers relating to Watson's daughter Katharine Mary, including letters of congratulation on her birth, 1918, and letters to her parents, 1950, 1955; material relating to Watson's mother's family, including letters of her father Samuel M Seares, 1871, 1879-1882; papers of Charles J B Hutchinson, 1879-1880, who emigrated to Australia after his engagement to Watson's mother was broken off but who remained in correspondence with her aunt, Fanny Rossiter; other Parker family papers, 1929-1972; miscellaneous other personal correspondence, 1896-1965.
Four Exchequer receipts dated 1568, 1580, 1616 and 1622 were found enclosed with a letter to Watson's wife.
Scientific correspondence of Watson, sometimes including photographs of fossil specimens, with leading palaeontologists in Africa, 1947-1953, America, 1915-1964, Australia, 1931-1962, China, 1926-1927, 1935-1964, England, 1913-1914, 1920, 1926-1960, France, 1930-1936, 1945-1956, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, 1920-1962, Russia, 1920-1962, and Scandinavia, 1922-1964, and with the palaeontologist Robert Broom, 1911-1950, and Watson's research assistant Joyce Townsend, 1929-1973, also including a few letters from Watson's wife and scientific colleagues, and an obituary of Watson, 1974; correspondence and papers on bones found at Qau, Egypt, 1930-1957, 1972; miscellaneous other palaeontological correspondence, 1912-1967. There are few copies of Watson's outgoing letters before the end of the Second World War.
Photographic material comprises photographs documenting Watson's career, [1912]-1965 and undated, some including colleagues; photographs of scientific colleagues, 1911-1951 and undated, including Watson's predecessor as Professor at University College London, J P Hill, and Robert Broom; album of photographs and signatures presented to Watson, 1951; undated family photographs, including a photograph of Watson as a boy, photographs of members of the Seares and Parker families, and photographs of Watson's wife, Katharine Margarite, and daughter, Katharine Mary; photographs of unidentified fossil specimens.
Royal Society Darwin Medal Award given to Watson, 1942. |
| AdminHistory | DMS Watson was born at Higher Broughton, near Salford, Lancashire, only son of the two children of David Watson, chemist, metallurgist, and pioneer of the electrolytic refining of copper, and his wife Mary, daughter of Samuel Seares, a London stockbroker, 1886. He was educated privately and at Manchester Grammar School and entered the University of Manchester in 1904. He intended a career in chemistry and industry, but in fact specialised in geology, and while an undergraduate began to study preserved plants from Coal Measures deposits, producing a seminal paper with Marie Stopes on coal balls in 'Philosophical Transactions', vol 200B, 1907.
Watson was appointed Beyer fellow at the University of Manchester in 1908 and became interested in fossil reptiles and other vertebrates, visited many fossil localities in Britain, and worked intensively in the British Museum (Natural History) (BMNH), 1908-1911. He became interested in the BMNH collection of fossil reptiles from the Karoo (Karroo) of South Africa, and to further his knowledge collected extensively there, met the palaeontologist Robert Broom, and set up a subdivision of the Beaufort Series into biostratigraphical zones in 1911. That year he was invited by James P Hill to be honorary lecturer in vertebrate palaeontology at University College London, and was Lecturer in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University College London from 1912-1921.
He travelled to Australia and North America in 1914-1916, returning to Britain and taking a technical commission as lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve from 1916-1918, transferring to the Royal Air Force as a captain, working on airship and balloon fabrics in 1918. After World War One, he conducted research at Newcastle upon Tyne on coal measure amphibia and fish and returned to University College London in 1920, succeeding A V Hill as Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in 1921.
During WWII, Watson supervised the evacuation of the department to Bangor before becaming Secretary of the Scientific Subcommittee of the Food Policy Committee of the War Cabinet in 1940. In 1945 he returned to University College in Bangor and, when the war-damaged department was made habitable, in London. He remained at UCL until he retired from his chair and became Emeritus Professor in 1951, then was appointed Alexander Agassiz visiting professor at Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard, 1952-1953. However, he continued to have the use of a room at UCL and with his secretary and illustrator since 1928, Joyce Townsend, continued to write papers until his full retirement from scientific research in 1965.
In 1917 he married Katharine Margarite Parker and they had two daughters, Katharine Mary and Janet Vida. D M S Watson died in 1973. See also F R Parrington and T S Westoll's memoir in 'Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society', vol xx (1974), pp 483-504. |
| CustodialHistory | Received for cataloguing by the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists (NCUACS) in March 1993 from Mrs Betty Sutton, second wife and widow of Professor John Sutton, whose first wife was Professor Janet Vida Watson, the younger daughter of D M S Watson. |