Botanist. Born in Oldmeldrum (Aberdeenshire), Watt was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and the Universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow. He qualified in medicine, but became a lecturer in Botany in Calcutta in 1874. He went on to occupy numerous roles in the Government of India, including being a member of a commission to demarcate the India-Burma border. While undertaking this work, he identified various new plant species. He published a remarkable twelve-volume Dictionary of the Economic Products of India (1889¿90), which described, amongst other things, the uses of indigenous Indian plants.
Watt was knighted in 1903, and retired to Lockerbie in 1906, where he later died.
