Life

He was born in London on 20 January 1815. He went to a private school, and was articled at the age of fifteen as an architect and surveyor; but went on to support himself by teaching, chiefly mathematical, privately and at a school. He then attended University College, London. In 1841 he graduated B.A. in the University of London.

In 1846 he became assistant to George Fownes

George Fownes

George Fownes, FRS was a British chemist.He attended the Palace School in Enfield. He obtained his PhD at Giesen, in Germany. From 1842 he was chemistry professor at the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, and from 1846 at University College, London. He was also secretary of the Chemical...

, professor of practical chemistry at University College, and occupied this post, after Fownes's death in 1849, until 1857, under Professor Alexander William Williamson

Alexander William Williamson

Alexander William Williamson FRS was an English chemist of Scottish descent. He is best known today for the Williamson ether synthesis.-Biography:...

. Having an impediment in speech he found himself unable to obtain a professorship, and worked on the literature of chemistry. In 1847 he was elected fellow of the Chemical Society

Chemical Society

The Chemical Society was formed in 1841 as a result of increased interest in scientific matters....

.

On 17 December 1849 he was elected editor of the Chemical Society's Journal, and about the beginning of 1860 he also became librarian to the society. Early in 1871 it was decided to print in the society's journal abstracts of all papers on chemistry appearing elsewhere. In February 1871 a committee was appointed to superintend the publication of the journal and these summaries, but soon the abstracts were left entirely to Watts.

In 1866 Watts was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1879 he was elected Fellow of the Physical Society. He was an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society and life-governor of University College, London. He died on 30 June 1884. He had married in 1854 Sophie, daughter of Henri Hanhart, of Mülhausen in Alsace

Alsace

Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...

, by whom he had eight sons and two daughters.

Works

In 1848 he was engaged by the Cavendish Society to translate into English and enlarge Leopold Gmelin

Leopold Gmelin

Leopold Gmelin was a German chemist.Gmelin was the son of Johann Friedrich Gmelin. He studied medicine and chemistry at Göttingen, Tübingen and Vienna, and in 1813 began to lecture on chemistry at Heidelberg, where in 1814 he was appointed extraordinary-, and in 1817 ordinary-, professor of...

's classic Handbuch der Chemie, a work which occupied much of his time till 1872, when the last of its eighteen volumes appeared. In 1858 he was engaged by Messrs. Longmans & Co. to prepare a new edition of the Dictionary of Chemistry and Mineralogy of Andrew Ure

Andrew Ure

Andrew Ure was a Scottish doctor, scholar and chemist.-Biography:Andrew Ure was born in Glasgow, the son of Alexander Ure, a cheesemonger and his wife, Anne. He received an M.D. from Glasgow University in 1801, and served briefly as an army surgeon before settling in Glasgow, where he became a...

; but the book was obsolete, and he transformed it, with the help of a staff, into an encyclopædia of chemical science. The first edition of Watts's Dictionary of Chemistry, in five volumes, was completed in 1868; supplements were published in 1872, 1875, and 1879–81. A new edition, revised and entirely rewritten by M. M. Pattison Muir

M. M. Pattison Muir

Matthew Moncrieff Pattison Muir, FRSE, FCS was a chemist and author. He taught chemistry at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and was head of the Caius Laboratory there...

 and Henry Forster Morley, was published 1888–94, 4 vols.

Watts also edited the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth editions of Fownes's ‘Manual of Chemistry.’