Sherwood Willoughby Watson, lecturer in physics, received
his secondary schooling at the Public School in Barkley East and passed the
matriculation examination of the University of the Cape of Good Hope in 1909,
obtaining the fifth highest marks of the 879 candidates. He continued his
studies at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, and was awarded the BA degree with
honours in physics by the University of the Cape of Good Hope in 1912. That
same year he was appointed as lecturer and demonstrator in physics and applied
mathematics at Rhodes University College, Grahamstown. During World War I
(1914-1918) he was on war duty, at least part of which he spent
at the Cavendish Laboratory in England, and afterwards returned to his
lecturing post. While in England he continued his studies at the University of
Cambridge as an 1851 Exhibition Scholar of the University of South Africa and was awarded an MA degree. By 1930 he had been
promoted to senior lecturer in physics at Rhodes, a post he still held in 1936.
By that time he had also obtained the degree Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Later
he became a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand.
In 1928 Watson, with M.C. Henderson as co-author, published two papers: "The heating effects of thorium and radium products" (Proceedings of the Royal Society A) and "The number of α-particles emitted by thorium C" (Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society).
Watson was a member of the South African Association for the
Advancement of Science and in 1931 served as joint secretary of its Section A
(which included physics) when the association held its annual congress in
Grahamstown. In July 1955 he was present at a meeting in Pretoria at which the
South African Institute of Physics was formed. In 1925 he married Helen
Margaret Symonds, with whom he had two daughters.
