[4][5] He received in 1902 his Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University with thesis Surface tension at the interface of two liquids determined experimentally by the method of ripple waves.

[1] In approximately the first week of September 1928, Watson and Wallace Waterfall (1900–1974),[8] a former doctoral student of Watson, were invited by UCLA's Vern Oliver Knudsen to an evening dinner at Knudsen's beach club near Los Angeles.

The meeting was attended by about forty scientists and engineers who started the Acoustical Society of America (ASA).

[4] Their younger son, Robert Barden Watson, was one of the U.S. Army's leading experts on electronics.

Their elder son, Norman Allen Watson, was a UCLA physics professor,[3] who did research on acoustics.