Catalogue description Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of ALEXANDER STUART WATT FRS (1892 - 1985)

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

SECTION A NOTEBOOKS NCUACS 38.6.92/A.1 - NCUACS 38.6.92/A.49

SECTION B NOTES AND DRAFTS NCUACS 38.6.92/B.1 - NCUACS 38.6.92/B.36

SECTION C NATURE CONSERVANCY NCUACS 38.6.92/C.1 - NCUACS 38.6.92/C.16

SECTION D CORRESPONDENCE NCUACS 38.6.92/D.1 - NCUACS 38.6.92/D.4

SECTION E PHOTOGRAPHS NCUACS 38.6.92/E.1 - NCUACS 38.6.92/E.34

SECTION F MAPS NCUACS 38.6.92/F.1 - NCUACS 38.6.92/F.21

INDEX OF CORRESPONDENTS

The collection is presented in the order given in the List of Contents. The collection as a whole provides good documentation of over forty years of research in Breckland ecology.

Section A, Notebooks, is the largest in the collection. Most date from Watt's work in the Breckland area from 1931 to the 1970s but there are also notebooks recording earlier research on the regeneration of British woodlands and a few from visits overseas, including a visit to Germany in 1931, also documented by a series of photographs (Section E), and a visit to the Sudan in 1965-66.

Section B, Notes and drafts, consists almost entirely of material relating to Breckland from 1931 (an early research proposal) to 1975. The largest single component of the section is the collected notes, data and correspondence for an article by Watt 'Rare species in Breckland: their management for survival', published in the Journal of Applied Ecology in 1971. There is also a little material from Watt's vist to the University of Colorado in 1963.

Section C, Nature Conservancy, principally documents Watt's service on the Breckland Committee of the Nature Conservancy from 1958, and his involvement with work carried out 1966-c.1970 by Mrs G. Crompton on collating the results of previous studies of Breckland.

Section D, Correspondence, is very slight.

Section E, Photographs, comprises a variety of photographic material 1931-73, principally relating to Watt's Breckland research. Of particular interest is a set of photographs taken by Watt on a visit to the heathland of north west Germany in 1931.

Section F, Maps, includes detailed plans of a number of the Nature Reserves in the area of Breckland in which Watt worked, including some of Lakenheath Warren, the site of most of his experiments and observations.

There is also an index of correspondents.

Compiled by Timothy E. Powell and Peter Harper

The work of the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists, and the production of this catalogue, are made possible by the support of the following societies and organisations:

The Biochemical Society

The British Library

British Petroleum plc

The Geological Society

The Institute of Physics

The Royal Society

The Royal Society of Chemistry

The Society of Chemical Industry

The Wellcome Trust

Watt, Alexander Stuart, 1892-1985, plant ecologist

The papers were received in April 1992 from Dr Oliver Rackham of the Cambridge University Botany Department via Cambridge University Library.

• Plant ecology

OUTLINE OF THE CAREER OF A. S. WATT

Alexander Stuart Watt was born in Aberdeenshire in 1892. Educated at local schools, he went on to Aberdeen University where he studied for the BSc (in Agriculture) and MA, graduating in 1913. He obtained a Carnegie Scholarship to study in Germany but his plans were frustrated by the outbreak of war. Instead he entered Cambridge University to study for a BA by research under A. G. Tansley, his subject being the failure of regeneration of British oakwoods. In 1915, after the statutory year in Cambridge, Watt returned to Aberdeen to take up the post of Lecturer in Forest Botany and Forest Zoology. In March 1916 he joined the Royal Engineers. His army service ended early in 1918 when he was badly gassed, an experience from which he never fully recovered - thereafter he had only one functional lung.

Watt went back to Cambridge to complete the residence requirements for his BA, which he received in 1919, before returning to his post at Aberdeen. Having been assured there would be no further residence requirements for the newly introduced PhD degree, he then registered with Cambridge as a PhD student. Watt was awarded the degree in 1923. He left Aberdeen in 1929, to take up a post at the Imperial Bureau of Entomology, Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire, before a few months later accepting an invitation to become Gurney Lecturer in Forestry at Cambridge University. He was transferred to the Botany Department in 1933 as Lecturer in Forest Botany, a post he held until retirement in 1959. He continued active research into the 1970s. In 1957 Watt was made a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1960 an Honorary Fellow of the British Ecological Society. He died in 1985.

Watt's first research began at Cambridge on the failure of regeneration in British oakwoods. He received the Cambridge BA for this work and then went on to study the same phenomenon in beechwoods and yew woods at Aberdeen. This research widened into interest in the general ecology of woodlands. On his move back to Cambridge in 1929 Watt began research into the ecology of the Breckland area of north west Suffolk and south west Norfolk studying the soil factors determining the composition of vegetation and later the effects of grazing by rabbits. Over an extended period from the 1930s to 1973 he made detailed study of the changes affecting different types of grassland. In the course of this work Watt became interested in the behaviour of bracken and studied the stages by which it advanced into grassland. From this work he was to develop a general concept of 'dynamic stability' in the plant community, envisaging it as a patchwork of vegetation at different stages of a repetitive cycle of composition.

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