John James Waterston - Early Life

Early Life

Waterston's father, George, was an Edinburgh sealing wax manufacturer and stationer, a relative of the Sandeman family Robert and his brother, George. John was born, the sixth of nine children, into a family alive with interests in literature, science and music. He was educated at Edinburgh High School before becoming apprenticed as a civil engineer to Messrs. Grainger and Miller. His employers encouraged him to attend lectures at the University of Edinburgh. He studied mathematics and physics under Sir John Leslie as well as attending lectures in chemistry, anatomy and surgery and becoming an active participant in the student literary society.

At age nineteen, Waterston published a paper proposing a mechanical explanation of gravitation, accounting for action at a distance in terms of colliding particles and discussing interactions between linear and rotational motion that would play a part in his later kinetic theory.

Waterston moved to London at age twenty-one, where he worked as a railroad surveyor, becoming an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers and publishing a paper on a graphical method for planning earthworks. The travel and disruption associated with his surveying work left Waterston little time to pursue his studies so he joined the hydrography department of the Admiralty under Francis Beaufort. It was Beaufort who, in 1839, supported Waterston for the post of naval instructor for cadets of the East India Company in Bombay. The posting worked well for Waterston who was able to pursue his reading and research at the library of Grant College.