William Watson

William Watson (1715 - 1787)

Image of Cordyceps militaris from Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck & A. C. F. Henry (1837) Das System der Pilze: part one

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Biography

1726 attends the Merchant Taylor's School

1730 starts learning to be an apothecary, in London

1741 elected to the Royal Society of London

1759 practices medicine as a doctor

1762 serves as doctor at the Foundling Hospital of London

1784 elected to the Royal College of Physicians
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Sources

Heinrich Dörfelt & Heike Heklau (1998) Die Geschichte der Mykologie
(Die Geschichte der Mykologie)

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Selected Publications

William Watson (1744) "Further remarks concerning mushrooms" in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Botany 43 pp. 51 - 57

William Watson (1764) "An account of the insect called the vegetable Fly" in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Botany 53 pp. 271 - 274

The vegetable fly was the common name for Cordyceps species: they were supposed (right up until the 20th century) to be an organism whose spores grew into insects! The insects then crawled underground, grew a protrusion and produced more spores...

William Watson (1775) The history and antiquities of the parish of Halifax, in Yorkshire

I'm not sure that the author of this is the same Watson who wrote the other works listed here.

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