Background
William Watson was born at Nantucket, Massachussets, the son of William and Mary (Macy) Watson.
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William Watson
Edit ProfileEducation
In 1857 he graduated from the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University with the degree of S. B. in engineering, having won the Boyden Prize in mathematics, and while serving as instructor in differential and integral calculus, 1857-59, he was awarded a second bachelor's degree, in mathematics, in 1858. Going for graduate study to the University of Jena, he received the degree of Ph. D. there in 1862 and subsequently took a partial course at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées at Paris. While he was in Europe, during the years 1860-63, he collected information on technical instruction which in 1864 was used as a basis in planning the organization of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Career
He was appointed to the faculty of the new institution as its first professor of mechanical engineering and descriptive geometry (1865 - 73) and organized the instruction in these subjects. In 1867 he visited the Universal Exposition at Paris and took lessons in plaster modeling while there. When he returned to America he brought models illustrating stereotomy, and in his courses introduced for the first time the practice of constructing from the drawings plaster models of the problems which occur in masonry - arches of various kinds, doorways, stairways, domes. While abroad he had also spent sometime at Karlsruhe, where he prepared lithographic notes for his lectures on elasticity and resistance of materials. In 1869 he again visited Europe and brought back with him valuable drawings from the Polytechnic School at Karlsruhe as well as a collection of models for instruction in descriptive geometry and mechanism. In 1873 he resigned his professorship in order to devote himself more fully to his studies and went as one of the United States commissioners to the Vienna exposition. He was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (of which he was recording secretary from 1884 until his death). As an active member of the Mathematical and Physical Club, founded in the early eighties, he contributed much in an informal way to further the interests of the instructors in mathematics and physics at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By his activity in the Society of Arts of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which began its work even before the Institute was opened to students and inaugurated the Technology Quarterly at a time when technical journals were scarce, he contributed to increase in America the knowledge of recent advances in science and engineering.
Achievements
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His published works include: Papers on Technical Education (1872); A Course in Descriptive Geometry (1873); the chapters on civil engineering and architecture in Vol. III (1876) of the Reports of the Commissioners of the United States to the International Exhibition Held at Vienna, 1873, edited by Robert H. Thurston; On the Protection of Life from Casualties in the Use of Machinery (1880); A Course in Shades and Shadows (1889); Paris Universal Exposition: Civil Engineering, Public Works and Architecture (1892); The International Water Transportation Congress, 1893 (1894), and many technical articles.
Connections
In 1873 he married Margaret Fiske, daughter of Augustus H. Fiske of Boston.
