Alister George Douglas Watson (2 May 1908 – 16 October 1982) was a

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

who was identified by several writers as a key member of the

Cambridge spy ring The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for ...

Early years

Born in

Leigh-on-Sea Leigh-on-Sea (), commonly referred to simply as Leigh, is a town and civil parish in the City of Southend-on-Sea, in the ceremonial county of Essex, England. In 2011, it had a population of 22,509. Geography Leigh-on-Sea is on the northern ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, Watson attended

Winchester School Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of t ...

and studied mathematics at

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...

. He was elected a fellow in 1933 and published two papers during his fellowship, ''Mathematics and its foundations'', Mind, volume 47, pp. 440– 451 (1938) and ''Principal directions in a gravitational field''. Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (Series 2) 6.01 (1939): 12-16. Watson joined the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...

whilst at Cambridge and also became a member and later secretary of the

Cambridge Apostles The Cambridge Apostles (also known as ''Conversazione Society'') is an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who became the first Bishop of Gibraltar.W. C. Lubenow, ''The Ca ...

. In the summer of 1937, he introduced

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...

. He was also well acquainted with

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

and other leading figures of the Cambridge academic life of the time. Watson and

Frank P. Ramsey Frank Plumpton Ramsey (; 22 February 1903 – 19 January 1930) was a British philosopher, mathematician, and economist who made major contributions to all three fields before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenste ...

assisted the economist

Piero Sraffa Piero Sraffa (5 August 1898 – 3 September 1983) was an influential Italian economist who served as lecturer of economics at the University of Cambridge. His book ''Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities'' is taken as founding the neo- ...

with the mathematics for his book ''Production of commodities by Means of Commodities''.

Career

Following Cambridge, Watson joined the British Admiralty as a civilian, working at the Admiralty Signal and Radar Establishment and eventually rose to become head of the Submarine Detection Research Section of the

Admiralty Research Laboratory The Admiralty Research Laboratory (ARL) was a research laboratory that supported the work of the UK Admiralty in Teddington, London, England from 1921 to 1977. History During the First World War, the Anti-Submarine Division of the Admiralty ha ...

(ARL). After the war, Watson published various papers relating to his research work, including ''Millimetre Wave Propagation''. Nature 158 (1946): 943 and ''Absolute Axes and Tidal Forces''. Nature 159 (1947): 233-233. He also published two further papers of more general mathematical interest, ''On the geometry of the wave equation''. Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Vol. 43. No. 04. Cambridge University Press, (1947) and ''On Mizel's problem''. Journal of the London Mathematical Society 1.1 (1962): 307-308. Watson was identified by former Soviet spy

Anthony Blunt Anthony Frederick Blunt (26 September 1907 – 26 March 1983), styled Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy. Blunt was professor of art history at the University of London, dire ...

as having been an ardent Marxist at Cambridge and, on the basis of other circumstantial evidence, questioned over a period of six weeks by MI5's interrogator Cecil Shipp in 1965. Whilst he confessed to having met with Soviet KGB officials, he denied passing secrets to them. Watson's security clearance was immediately revoked, and he was removed from his post and transferred to the National Institute of Oceanography (previously housed by the ARL, now a part of the

National Oceanography Centre The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) is a marine science research and technology institution based on two sites in Southampton and Liverpool, United Kingdom. It is the UK’s largest institution for integrated sea level science, coastal and d ...

), where he worked until retirement. Watson's publications while working there included "Air-sea interaction" ''Science Progress'' Vol. 56, No. 223 (July 1968), pp. 303–323.

Family

Alister Watson was married twice. He had one daughter by his first marriage and a daughter and a son by his second. He died in

Haslemere The town of Haslemere () and the villages of Shottermill and Grayswood are in south west Surrey, England, around south west of London. Together with the settlements of Hindhead and Beacon Hill, they comprise the civil parish of Haslemere i ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

Notes

External links

'The Watsons of Kilconnor, County Carlow, 1650 - Present', 2019 by Peter Coutts and Alan Watson
{{DEFAULTSORT:Watson, Alister George Douglas 1908 births 1982 deaths Alumni of King's College, Cambridge 20th-century British mathematicians British communists Communist Party of Great Britain members People from Leigh-on-Sea