William Watson (scientist)

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William Watson . Line engraving by J. Thornwaite after an oil painting by the English portrait painter Lemuel Francis Abbott , 1784.

Sir William Watson (born April 3, 1715 in London ; † May 10, 1787 ibid) was an English pharmacist, doctor and naturalist .

As a member of the London Royal Society , Watson wrote a number of papers on botanical subjects and advocated the introduction of Linnaeus' systematics . However, Watson was best known for his achievements in the field of experimental physics, for which he was awarded the Copley Medal in 1745 . In 1746, together with John Bevis , he achieved a decisive improvement in the so-called “ Leiden bottle ”, the earliest design of a condenser . In addition to his major work with the title Experiments and Observations tending to illustrate the Nature and Properties of Electricity , which appeared in several editions , Watson published, based on his experience as a doctor at the London orphanage, in 1768 a work on vaccinating children against smallpox, which was highly regarded at the time . In 1772 he was appointed Vice President of the Royal Society.

Watson's official botanical author abbreviation is " Watson ".

life and work

Title page of Linnés Species Plantarum . Watson wrote the first review of the seminal work in England.
Illustration of one of Watson's experiments on electrostatics from the French edition of Experiments and Observations tending to illustrate the Nature and Properties of Electricity (Paris 1748). On the right-hand side, an electric machine generates static electricity that is conducted through the bodies of two test persons. The discharge from the finger of the left test person leads to the formation of a mist of droplets over a bowl of water.

Youth and education

William Watson was born in Smithfield , London, in 1715, the son of a grain merchant . From 1726 he attended the Merchant Taylors' School and began on April 6, 1731 an apprenticeship with the pharmacist Thomas Richardson. During the following eight years he distinguished himself through particular diligence in identifying plants, for which he was awarded a prize by the London Society of Apothecaries . In the summer of 1738, Watson married, completed his training early and opened his own pharmacy in the London borough of Aldersgate .

Member of the Royal Society

From March 1738 Watson attended the meetings of the London Royal Society , which met since 1660 with the proviso that scientific knowledge should be derived from experimental research, instead of - as was common up until then - based on recognized authorities. On April 9, 1741, Watson was elected a member of the Society and henceforth regularly attended both the public and the non-public meetings that took place since 1743. With the essay A Case Wherein Part of the Lungs Were Coughed up ("A case in which parts of the lungs were coughed up") he published shortly after its inclusion in 1741, the first in a long series of contributions to the Philosophical Transactions , the publication organ of the Royal Society.

Botanical Studies

Watson's own botanical essays in Philosophical Transactions covered a wide range of topics. In 1743 he refuted Roger Pickering's claim that he was the first to discover the multiplication of fungi by spores by referring to the research of Pier Antonio Micheli . In December 1744 he published a first description of the mushroom genus Erdsterne ( Geastrum ), which met with great interest among European botanists. In several publications Watson devoted himself to the description of accidents caused by the poison of hemlock and black henbane . In an essay from 1754 he argued for the dioeciousness of the European holly .

In addition to the publication of his own work, Watson also emerged in the field of botany by discussing or communicating third-party research results. In 1742 he reviewed Albrecht von Haller's description of the Swiss alpine flora ( Enumeratio methodica stirpium Helveticae indigenarum ) and in May he published the translation of a report by the French Jean-André Peysonnel (1694–1759), which had been neglected in England until then , that corals were animals and not - how previously assumed - plants are. At the end of 1754, the first English-language review of Carl von Linné's Species Plantarum appeared in Gentleman's Magazine under the author's abbreviation “WW” , in which Watson praised Linné's nomenclature . The English botanist Richard Pulteney , himself a supporter of the Linnaean systematics , Watson called a "living encyclopedia of botany" (later a living lexicon of botany ).

Experiments on electricity

From 1744 onwards, Watson conducted experiments on electricity . Encouraged by reports from Leipzig professor Johann Heinrich Winckler , at the end of March 1745 he succeeded in igniting warm alcohol by means of an electrostatic discharge . In a further series of experiments, which he carried out in the course of 1745, he experimented with various insulators and examined the conductivity of glass, cork and metal. Assisted by the acting chairman of the Royal Society Martin Folkes , some of the experiments took place in the presence of the two sons of the English king, Friedrich Ludwig von Hanover and Wilhelm August, Duke of Cumberland .

At the suggestion of Hans Sloane , the former chairman of the Royal Society, Watson received the Copley Medal in 1745 for his experiments , the society's highest honor, which is given once a year. A year later, Watson published his results under the title Experiments and Observations tending to illustrate the Nature and Properties of Electricity ("Experiments and observations to explain the nature and properties of electricity"). The approximately 60-page publication saw four editions in London alone in the same year and was already available in a French translation two years later.

In agreement with the French experimental physicist Abbé Nollet , Watson viewed electricity as a continuous, moving current of electrical fluid. He understood the electrifying machine as a kind of pump that pumps this fluid out of the ground via its earth .

Leiden bottle

When news of the invention of the Leiden bottle reached England in 1746 , Watson immediately began to experiment with it. With the Leiden bottle, the oldest type of capacitor , electrical charge could be collected, amplified, stored and transported for the first time. It consists of a glass vessel that is open at the top and a brass rod with a metal ball protrudes from the lid. The bottle can be charged with the help of an electrifying machine and using the effect of the influence .

While the bottle was filled with alcohol in the original experimental setup, Watson, at the suggestion of the London doctor John Bevis, did without the liquid and enhanced the effect of the bottle by using thinner glass and an inner and outer cladding with tinfoil . If a test person touched the metal ball protruding from the bottle and the outer tinfoil lining of the bottle at the same time, the charge stored in the bottle was discharged with a violent blow. Watson saw the effect as a confirmation of his previously developed ideas about the flow of electricity and published his results before the end of 1746 in the text A Sequel to the Experiments and Observations tending to illustrate the Nature and Properties of Electricity (“A continuation of experiments and observations explaining the nature and properties of electricity ”).

In the same year he also demonstrated that the earth can be used as a return conductor.

In 1747 Watson tried to measure the speed of electricity with Martin Folkes , John Bevis, James Bradley and Charles Cavendish . To do this, they laid a cable from a Leyden bottle across London's Westminster Bridge and tried to direct the electrical current back through the Thames and their own bodies. From the failure of the experiment, they concluded that the electricity was too fast to be measured.

When the first edition of Benjamin Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity, made at Philadelphia in America appeared in London in 1751, Watson wrote generally benevolent reviews, but contradicted Franklin on the question of charging the Leiden bottle. A year later, Watson's attempt to study electricity during a thunderstorm failed. In the same year he reported to the Royal Society about his experiments with Cavendish on electrical discharges in a vacuum and compared the effect with that of the northern lights . At the end of the 1750s, the relationship between Watson and Franklin relaxed and in December 1762 Watson recommended the British Admiralty to install Franklin's lightning rods to protect the Purfleet arsenal . Two years later he published his own proposal for the protection of powder magazines in the Philosophical Transactions . In 1769 he belonged together with Benjamin Franklin, Edward Delaval , Benjamin Wilson and John Canton to a commission that worked out a proposal to secure London's St Paul's Cathedral against lightning.

Working as a medic

In October 1762, Watson went to London as a doctor at Foundling Hospital , an institution for orphans founded by the philanthropist Thomas Coram . In the Philosophical Transactions Watson published work on the dysentery and flu epidemics that broke out in London that same year . In 1763 he wrote an essay on the treatment of muscle tension in tetanus with electric shocks .

Watson published his most important work in the field of medicine in 1768 under the title An Account of a series of experiments, instituted with a view of ascertaining the most successful method of inoculating the small-pox (“Report on a series of experiments that were carried out with the aim of identifying the most successful method of smallpox vaccination ”). The work was based on his experience as a pediatrician in the orphanage. Watson recommended that children under three years of age should not under any circumstances be vaccinated against smallpox using the variola virus, which was practiced at the time, while at the same time preventing them from consuming meat and alcoholic beverages.

On October 6, 1786, Watson was raised to the nobility for his achievements as a Knight Bachelor . He died on May 10, 1787, leaving a son who later succeeded him as a doctor and naturalist, and a daughter who was married to Edward Beadon, brother of Richard Beadon, Bishop of Bath and Wells .

Honors

In his honor the genus Watsonia Mill. From the plant family of the iridaceae was named.

Fonts

Standalone fonts

Journal articles (selection)

  • A Case Wherein Part of the Lungs Were Coughed up. Presented to the Royal Society by William Watson, FRS , in: Philosophical Transactions 41 (1741), ISSN  0260-7085 , pp. 623-624, available online as a PDF document in the central Wikimedia Commons media directory (Watson's first publication as a member of the London Royal Society).
  • Some Remarks Occasioned by the Precedeing Paper, Addressed to the Royal Society by Mr. William Watson, Apothecary, and FRS , in: Philosophical Transactions 42 (1743), ISSN  0260-7085 , pp. 599-601, available online as a PDF document in the central media directory Wikimedia Commons (Watson's first statement against Pickering's remarks on the discovery of fungal spores).
  • Experiments and Observations, Tending to Illustrate the Nature and Properties of Electricity , in: Philosophical Transactions 43 (1745), ISSN  0260-7085 , pp. 481–501, available online as a PDF document in the central media directory Wikimedia Commons (Watsons report to the Royal Society on the 1745 series of experiments on electricity).
  • An Account of a Manuscript Treatise… Intituled, Traité du Corail… That is to Say, A Treatise upon Coral, and Several Other Productions Furnish'd by the Sea, in Order to Illustrate the Natural History Thereof, by the Sieur de Peyssonnel… Extracted and Translated from the French by Mr. William Watson , in: Philosophical Transactions 47 (1752), ISSN  0260-7085 , pp. 445–469, available online as a PDF document in the central media directory Wikimedia Commons (Watson's translation of the report by Jean- André Peyssonnel that corals are animals and not plants).
  • Observations upon the Effects of Lightning, with an Account of the Apparatus Proposed to Prevent Its Mischiefs to Buildings, More Particularly to Powder Magazines… , in: Philosophical Transactions 54 (1764), ISSN  0260-7085 , pp. 201-227, available online as a PDF document in the central media directory Wikimedia Commons (Watson's suggestions for protecting powder magazines from lightning strikes).

literature

Web links

Commons : William Watson (scientist)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Watson first described the experiment in his report to the Royal Society under the title Experiments and Observations, Tending to Illustrate the Nature and Properties of Electricity , in: Philosophical Transactions 43 (1745), pp. 481-501, here p. 491.
  2. ↑ In addition: Felix Bryk, Linné and the Species Plantarum , in: Taxon 2, 3 (1953), ISSN  0040-0262 , pp. 63-73, here pp. 68f. The article is a facsimile excerpt from Linnaeus' answer to Watson's review in Gentleman's Magazine (Fig. 4).
  3. ↑ Pulteney, Historical And Biographical Sketches Of The Progress Of Botany In England , Volume 2, London 1790, p. 337.
  4. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 299.
  5. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
  6. ↑ About Rackstrow: Richard Daniel Altick, The Shows of London , p 55
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on June 16, 2007 .
personal data
SURNAME Watson, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English pharmacist, doctor and naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1715
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 1787
Place of death London