The James Craig Watson Medal was established by the bequest of James Craig Watson, and is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences for contributions to astronomy.
The recipients have been:
| 1887 | Benjamin A. Gould |
| 1889 | Eduard Schönfeld |
| 1891 | G. F. J. A. Auwers |
| 1894 | Seth Carlo Chandler |
| 1899 | David Gill |
| 1913 | J. C. Kapteyn |
| 1916 | Armin O. Leuschner |
| 1924 | C. V. L. Charlier |
| 1929 | Willem De Sitter |
| 1936 | Ernest W. Brown |
| 1948 | Samuel A. Mitchell |
| 1951 | Herbert R. Morgan |
| 1955 | Chester B. Watts |
| 1957 | George Van Biesbroeck |
| 1960 | Yusuke Hagihara |
| 1961 | Otto Heckmann |
| 1964 | Willem J. Luyten |
| 1965 | Paul Herget |
| 1966 | Wallace J. Eckert |
| 1969 | Jürgen Moser |
| 1972 | André Deprit |
| 1975 | Gerald Maurice Clemence |
| 1979 | Charles T. Kowal |
| 1982 | Stanton J. Peale |
| 1985 | W. Kent Ford, Jr |
| 1986 | Robert B. Leighton |
| 1991 | Maarten Schmidt |
| 1994 | Yasuo Tanaka |
| 1998 | Carolyn S. Shoemaker and Eugene M. Shoemaker |
| 2001 | David Todd Wilkinson |
| 2004 | Vera C. Rubin |
| 2007 | Michael Skrutskie and Roc Cutri |
| 2010 | Margaret Geller |
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