J P Hill Collection
Katherine Parker Watson
Katherine Margarite Parker Watson was Hill's collaborator on the neural crest project. She was born on April 26, 1891 as the sixth child of a country minister.
Watson (then Parker) received her undergraduate degree from University College London and received one of the first postgraduate awards from that institution. She worked with Hill on her D.Sc. thesis, “The development of the hypophysis cerebri, pre-oral gut, and related structures in the Marsupialia” which was published in April 1917 (reference below).
In December, 1917 she married DMS Watson, who was also a member of the Zoology department at University College London. After completing her degree she continued to work with Hill on the neural crest project. Watson's first daughter was born in October, 1918 and her second on September 1923. Her second daughter, Janet Vita Watson was a distinguished geologist, and provided this brief biography of Katherine Watson (found in the archives of University College, London). In Janet Watson's words, "she continued research and demonstrating intermittently after her marriage until soon after I was born and took up undergraduate teaching again for a short spell during the second world war”.
Parker, K. M. 1917 The development of the hypophysis cerebri, pre-oral gut, and related structures in the Marsupialia. Journal of Anatomy 51: 13-249
DMS Watson links:
Material in the neural crest study
The Hill embryological collection