William Whitehead Watts

William Whitehead Watts was a British geologist born June 7, 1860, near Broseley, Shropshire, England, who died July 30, 1947, at age eighty seven, and who specialized in petrology, petrography, stratigraphy and Precambrian rocks, conducting extensive research on the ancient rocks of Shropshire and on the geology of Charnwood Forest, work he pursued in collaboration with Charles Lapworth. He held professorships at Oxford from 1888, at the University of Birmingham from 1897 to 1906, and at Imperial College London from 1906 to 1930, publishing Geology for Beginners in 1898, Shropshire, the Geography of the County in 1919, and Geology of the Ancient Rocks of Charnwood Forest in 1947, and serving as secretary from 1898 to 1909 and president from 1910 to 1912 of the Geological Society. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1904, won the Murchison Medal in 1915, was appointed an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1934, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1927.