Jack Throck Watson

Jack (or J Throck, as he was professionally known) Watson was born in was born May 2, 1939 in Casey, Iowa, a village of 800 people in southwestern Iowa, to Jesse H. and Anne Watson. Jack grew up in a town of about 1,000 residents in northern Iowa, Nora Springs. Jesse was the area's school superintendent. Jack had one brother, George Watson. During these early years, he spent much time as a farm boy, especially in the summers. Jack, and his father and brother spent lots of time harvesting bluegrass, fishing and bird hunting, a passion Jack pursued the rest of his life. To that end, for a good part of his life after taking his first position at Vanderbilt, Jack had one or more black Labrador Retrievers carefully trained for the bird hunting.

After graduating from Nora Springs High School 1957, he went to Iowa State University, majoring in Chemistry and being a part of the University’s Air Force ROTC program for four years which accounts for the four years he spent on active duty in California and Texas. Before serving his Air Force obligation, after graduation Iowa State with a degree in Chemical Technology in 1961, he went to graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute Technology (MIT). While at Iowa State, Watson also became a member of the Alpha Chi Sigma (National Chemistry) fraternity, Alpha Chi chapter, in 1958.

At MIT, Watson was a PhD candidate in the laboratory of Klaus Biemann, one of the three most notable experts in organic mass spectrometry at the time; the others two being Fred W. McLafferty and John H. Beynon. This was an incredible time in the Biemann laboratory. During Watson tenure there he overlapped with PhD students Alma L. Burlingame, James A. McCloskey, Paul Vouros, John M. Hayes, Ronald A. Hites, Sanford P. Markey, and Robert C. Murphy, all of who have made significant contributions to science through mass spectrometry and whose names are as well known as Watson's.

As soon as he graduated from MIT, Watson reported for duty in the United States Air Force in the San Francisco Bay area. A friend of his from high school, introduced Jack to Judith Sjoberg. Not long after that, they were married and moved to Brooks Air Base in San Antonio, Texas.

After completing his tour of duty in the Air Force, Jack took a one-year postdoctoral position in Strasbourg France at the Institut de Chimie, Université de Strasbourg under the direction of Dr. Robert Wolf. During this time and through the licensing of the Watson-Biemann gas separator to Thomson-CSF, for use in a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer they ware manufacturing at the time, Watson made everlasting ties to the French Mass Spectrometry community.

After completing his postdoctoral fellowship in France, in 1969, Watson returned the United States and held a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville Tennessee. Jack and Judith had two children in Nashville, Jennifer, born in 1970, and Brent born in 1972. Jack was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1974. While at Vanderbilt, Jack published the first edition of Introduction to Mass Spectrometry: Biomedical, Environmental, and Forensic Applications in 1976. One of the things that made this such an outstanding text on mass spectrometry was it was the first book to include journal titles as part of the cited literature. This set in to motion an important elevation in the citation of mass spectrometry literature.

Fred Mc Lafferty had just resigned from teaching a course on the interpretation of mass spectrometry for the American Chemical Society. Harold G. (Harry) Walsh had just joined the ACS as director of the Short Course program. Watson’s nascent publication made him ideal for a McLafferty replacement. Walsh approached Watson and asked him to teach a course. Walsh also asked that Watson select someone from the mass spectrometry industry to co-teach the course. Watson had met O. David Sparkman, an American working for the French Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry company, Riber, in Paris, just a few months earlier. They hit it off very well on that first meeting, Watson asked Sparkman to contribute to the data systems part of the course. They taught the first session at the annual Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy in the Spring of 1978. They taught the course two more times that year at the annual ACS meetings and continued teaching into the first decade of the next millennium. The materials developed in that course continue to be used in short courses today that are taught by Sparkman.

In 1980 Jack accepted a joint appointment in the Departments of Biochemistry and Chemistry at Michigan State University, East Lansing Michigan. He also became the director (Principal Investigator) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) P41 Regional Resource in Mass Spectrometry at MSU. He remained director of the NIH facility until the NIH no longer funded such facilities and retired from his teaching position in 2006. The MS Facility continued to operate after funding stopped through the efforts of Watson, the Biochemistry and Chemistry Departments.

During his carrier at Michigan State and Vanderbilt, Watson was the advisor to 35 PhD students, 7 Masters degree students and 19 post-doctoral associates. He had over 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications, 18 book chapters, and authored five books. One of his greatest accomplishments was the development of a series of short-courses for the American Chemical Society on GC/MS, MS Interpretation, and Mass Spectrometry for the Characterization of Peptides and Proteins. These were among the longest running, best attended, and most popular courses offered by the ACS Short-course program according to the erstwhile director, Harold D. Walsh.

A Fellowship in Watson's name has been established at Michigan State University where recipients will be graduate students in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.This is the “Jack Throck Watson Graduate Fellowship in Biochemistry Endowment.” This has already funded several former members of the Watson group (students, postdocs), friends, colleagues, and family.