Earnest Charles Watson

Earnest Charles Watson, Jr. (June 18, 1892 – December 5, 1970) was an American physicist. He helped establish the physics department at the California Institute of Technology, where he worked for 40 years. He was the head of faculty for his last 14 years until he left in 1959 to become the science attaché to the United States Embassy in India. He was married to Jane Werner Watson, author of the Little Golden Books series for young children.

Early life and education Earnest C. Watson was born on June 18, 1892 in Sullivan, Illinois, where his father was a Presbyterian minister.

Academic career Watson returned to the University of Chicago after the war as an assistant professor. He was sent to Pasadena, California by physicist Robert A. Millikan to oversee the construction of the first physics laboratory on the Caltech campus, then called the Throop Polytechnic Institute. When Millikan joined Caltech in 1917, Watson followed him. Millikan was the first president, and he won Nobel for measuring the charge of an electron in 1923. Watson worked closely with Millikan, Arthur Noyes and George Ellery Hale to build the school's physics department into a premier research institutions.

University administration From 1945 until his retirement in 1959, Earnest Watson was dean of the Caltech faculty, and he served as acting chairman of Caltech's division of physics, mathematics and astronomy from 1946 to 1946. During World War II, he was a member of the National Defense Research Committee established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940, and he directed research on artillery rockets, torpedoes and other ordnance. Owing to his experiences in India and background in science and education, he became a consultant to the Ford Foundation on educational projects in India and Pakistan. He was active in that work to the end of his life. The couple met in Greece and traveled frequently throughout their relationship, including a six month tour through the Middle East in 1956 and a South America trip in 1958.

Watson died at his home in Santa Barbara, California on December 5, 1970. Upon Watson's death, Elsa Werner donated the couple's collection of Indian art to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where it was put on display in 1971.