122 | Great Geologists
Janet Watson
Read was building a research team to study the Precambrian
metamorphic rocks of North-West Highlands of Scotland. He
was so impressed by Watson’s undergraduate performance
(he reputably said she should have been given 120% in her
finals exams to do her justice) that he invited her to join as a
postgraduate student. Her work started on the migmatites
of Sutherland (leading to her publishing her first of many
scientific papers in 1948), but moved on to the Lewisian of
the Scourie area in the remote North-West Highlands. By
1949 she had obtained her PhD and married John Sutton; a
honeymoon in the Channel Islands providing an opportunity
to start preparations for a one-off paper on the geology of
the Isle of Sark! She then began a long career as Research
Assistant to Read until 1974 when she became Professor of
Geology.
Portrait of Janet Watson, courtesy of
Archives Imperial College London.
The Geological Society, housed in Piccadilly, London is
doubtlessly one of the world’s most prestigious geoscience
institutions. Visitors from all around the world attend its
conferences and meetings held in the lecture theatre
named after one of the greatest geologists of the 20th
Century – Janet Watson. This honour is a fitting tribute to
one of the most distinguished and well-known personalities
in geoscience, famous for her gift of clear and persuasive
communication.
Watson was born in 1923 into a geological family. Her father
was Professor D.M.S. Watson of University College London,
an international authority on vertebrate paleontology. She
gained a degree in General Science from Reading University
in 1943 going onto Imperial College where she graduated
with first class honours in geology in 1947. Imperial was to
be her base for the rest of her career collaborating first with
the formidable H.H. Read and later with her research student
colleague and subsequently husband, John Sutton.
Janet Watson with her husband and scientific
collaborator John Sutton in the field, in NW
Scotland, early in their research careers. Courtesy
of Archives Imperial College London.