William Watson (scientist)

William Watson (3 April 1715 - 10 May 1787) was an English physician and scientist who was born and died in London. His early work was in botany, and he helped to introduce the work of Carolus Linnaeus into England. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1741 and vice president in 1772.

In 1746 he showed that the capacity of the Leyden jar could be increased by coating it inside and out with lead foil. In the same year he proposed that the two types of electricity - vitreous and resinous - posited by DuFay were actually a surplus (a positive charge) and a deficiency (a negative charge) of a single fluid which he called electrical ether, and that the quantity of electrical charge was conserved. (He acknowledged that the same theory had been independently developed at the same time by Benjamin Franklin - the two men later became allies in both scientific and political matters.)

References

• Biography of Benjamin Franklin
• Biography of Watson
• Biography at Wolfram Research
• "Watson, Sir William", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2005