C. Watson papers (Box 1)
DIRECTOR 1863-79
James Craig Watson was born in Canada on January 28, 1838. His family moved to the Ann Arbor area in 1850 to pursue a better education for Watson and his siblings. After three years of private instruction, he entered the University of Michigan at age fifteen. Watson graduated in 1857, and then received his Master’s degree after studying for two years with Franz Brünnow. Watson became Brünnow’s assistant, was placed in charge of the Observatory in Brünnow’s absence in 1859-60, and was then named Director when Brünnow left the University in 1863. He published 15 astronomical papers before the age of twenty-one. Watson was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1868, and he received numerous awards and honorary degrees. He became well known for his discovery of 22 asteroids, and he earned a Lalande gold medal from the French Academy of Sciences in 1870 for discovering six asteroids in one year. His wife, Annette Waite of Dexter, Michigan, assisted him on his many important astronomical expeditions, including eclipses of the sun and a round-the-world trip in 1874 to observe the Transit of Venus in China. Watson left the University of Michigan in 1879 to serve as the inaugural director of the Washburn Observatory at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He died suddenly in Madison on November 22, 1880, and was buried in ForestHill Cemetery, Ann Arbor.
