Abstract
No man of his generation has exercised greater or more knowledgeable influence on geologists and the progress of British geology than Prof. William Whitehead Watts, president-elect of the British Association for 1935. Born at Broseley in Shropshire in 1860, he was educated first at local schools and then at Denstone College, Staffordshire, and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. His teaching career was started when he undertook university extension lecturing and for a time took charge of the Department of Geology at Leeds. It was continued when, after some years of service as petrologist on H.M. Geological Survey, he became deputy professor of geology at Oxford. It was as professor of geography and assistant professor with Charles Lapworth at Birmingham that he made his mark, and by that time he had produced his “Geology for Beginners”, a small book which for forty years has provided the first introduction of the science to young geologists in all the English-speaking world. In 1906, Watts succeeded Judd as professor of geology at the Royal College of Science and the Royal School of Mines, London, where he has built up a school, the students from which have filled academic professorships,directorships of geological surveys and many and diverse posts of influence in industry in many lands. Since the Imperial College was instituted in 1908, the Department of Geology has been extended by Watts's organisation of the Sub-Departments of Oil Technology and Mining.
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Prof W. W. Watts, F.R.S.: President-Elect of the British Association. Nature 134, 410 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134410b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134410b0