Jim Watt

James Michael Watt (5 July 1914 – 17 September 1988) was a New Zealand rugby union player and medical academic. He was New Zealand's first professor of paediatrics, appointed at the University of Otago in 1967.

Early life and family Born in Dunedin in 1914, Watt was the son of Mary Roberta Watt (née McCahon), an aunt of the artist Colin McCahon, and her husband Michael Herbert Watt, a general practitioner and later a public health administrator. He was educated at Wellesley College and then Wellington College, where he was the athletics champion, a member of the 1st XV rugby team and head prefect. After a year at Victoria University College, Watt studied medicine at the University of Otago, graduating MB ChB in 1937. While at university, he won the New Zealand universities 440 yards athletics title every year from 1934 to 1937.

World War II Volunteering for military service, Watt was commissioned as a lieutenant in June 1939 and posted to the 2nd Field Ambulance, New Zealand Medical Corps. In 1940 he was the medical officer at the Waiouru Military Camp, and later that year he was sent overseas with the 3rd Echelon, 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and served for four years in North Africa and Italy. He died in Auckland in 1988.

Watt was elected a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1968, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians the following year.