Donald Elmslie Robertson Watt FRSE

Royal Society of Edinburgh

The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity, operating on a wholly independent and non-party-political basis and providing public benefit throughout Scotland...

 (15 August 1926–18 April 2004) was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 and Professor Emeritus at St Andrews University.

Born in Aberdeen

Aberdeen

Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....

, D.E.R. Watt's family were the proprietors of the Aberdeen University Press. Watt studied at Aberdeen Grammar School

Aberdeen Grammar School

Aberdeen Grammar School, known to students as The Grammar is a state secondary school in the City of Aberdeen, Scotland. It is one of twelve secondary schools run by the Aberdeen City Council educational department...

, before reading history at Aberdeen University. He graduated in 1950, and moved to Oriel College, Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

, receiving his D. Phil

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 in 1957.

Watt taught history at St Andrews University for his entire career, excepting a year's study at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. He worked for many years on editing and translating a nine volume edition, the first since 1759, of Abbot Walter Bower

Walter Bower

Walter Bower , Scottish chronicler, was born about 1385 at Haddington, East Lothian.He was abbot of Inchcolm Abbey from 1418, was one of the commissioners for the collection of the ransom of James I, King of Scots, in 1423 and 1424, and in 1433 one of the embassy to Paris on the business of the...

's Scotichronicon, a key resource for Scotland in the Late Middle Ages

Scotland in the Late Middle Ages

Scotland in the late Middle Ages established its independence from England under figures including William Wallace in the late 13th century and Robert Bruce in the 14th century...

. Professor Watt also published on the Scottish church where he was the acknowledged expert on sources, holding the chair in Scottish Church History at St Andrews.

He worked for the publication of the Atlas of Scottish History, issued by Edinburgh University in 1975 and again, with revisions, in 1995. He served as co-editor of the Scottish Historical Review for eight years, and as president of the Scottish History Society for four.

In 2000 he was made an honorary Doctor of Letters

Doctor of Letters

Doctor of Letters is a university academic degree, often a higher doctorate which is frequently awarded as an honorary degree in recognition of outstanding scholarship or other merits.-Commonwealth:...

 by Glasgow University.

Select bibliography

• Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to A.D. 1410, 1977, Oxford: Clarendon Press, ISBN 0-19-822447-8
• (series editor; editor, with John MacQueen, Winifred MacQueen, and others) Walter Bower
  Walter Bower
  Walter Bower , Scottish chronicler, was born about 1385 at Haddington, East Lothian.He was abbot of Inchcolm Abbey from 1418, was one of the commissioners for the collection of the ransom of James I, King of Scots, in 1423 and 1424, and in 1433 one of the embassy to Paris on the business of the...
  
  's Scotichronicon (9 vols, 1987–1997)
• (editor) A history book for Scots : selections from Scottichronicon (1998)
• Crawford, Barbara E. (editor), Church, chronicle and learning in medieval and early Renaissance Scotland: essays presented to Donald Watt on the occasion of the completion of the publication of Bower's Scotichronicon. (1999)
• Medieval Church Councils in Scotland, 2000, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, ISBN 0-567-08731-X
• (with N. Shead) Heads of religious houses in Scotland from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries (2001)
• (with Athol L. Murray) Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae medii aevi : ad annum 1638, New Series, Volume 25 (Revised ed.), Edinburgh: The Scottish Record Society, ISBN 0-902054-19-8, ISSN 0143-9448

External links

• RSE Obituary by A.A.M. Duncan.
• Obituary in The Independent
  The Independent
  The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
  
  (1 May 2004)