Janet Watson

Professor Janet Vida Watson FRSFGS (1923–1985) was a British geologist. She was the first woman to become president of the Geological Society of London.

She was born 1 September 1923 in Hampstead, London. Her parents were David M. S. Watson FRS, a vertebrate paleontologist and professor of zoology and comparative anatomy in the University of London, and Katharine M. Parker, who did research in embryology before marrying. Watson grew up with her sister Katharine Mary in South Hampstead and attended the local school, before going to Reading University to read General Science. She graduated with a first class honours degree in biology and geology in 1943.

After graduation, she tried working at the National Institute for Research in Dairying looking at chicken growth and later teaching biology at Wentworth School, Bournemouth before deciding to become a geologist. She applied to Imperial College in 1945, completing her BSc in Geology in 1947, again getting a first class degree. After her second graduation, the then head of department, Herbert Harold Read, took her on as his student and set her to work on the migmatites of Sutherland. She then began to work on the Lewisian complex of NW Scotland together with John Sutton, another of Read's research students. The two completed their PhD theses in 1949 followed by a wedding and honeymoon in the Channel Islands, which explains a joint publication on the geology of Sark a few years later.

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