[7] His father, James George Watson, was a Scottish banker and financial manager who was away in Africa, so he was raised largely by his mother, Mary Vernon.
He obtained his Ph.D. in 1938, his thesis "Studies in the anatomy of anomalous monocotyledons" winning him the Hutton Balfour prize for Botany.
Eric together with his brother Donald were among the first members of the newly founded Scottish Ornithologists' Club in 1933.
[1][2] After Edinburgh he then worked (1938–39) at Liverpool University as a demonstrator, which is where he met his future wife, Joyce Edwards (1920–2009).
In 1939 he took a Commonwealth Fellowship at Harvard for two years, returning as senior lecturer at Harper Adams Agricultural College, Newport, Shropshire (1941–46).