His sister's chief recollections are of long hours closeted with his father in his study and of occasions when he was so absorbed that he could pass his mother and sister in the street without recognising them.

At school he was not particularly sociable, being somewhat reserved, and while his fellows were playing games during their lunch hour Watson would be down at Addison Road station watching the trains and recording the numbers of the engines. This early interest developed later into an absorbing interest in railways. It was while still at school ... that he published his first mathematical paper, in the December 1903 number of 'The Gazette'; ... "A method for determining a very rapidly converging series for the square root of any positive integer."

He often remarked that he was eternally grateful that during his last three years at St Paul's School, where he was educated, there was an insufficient number of staff to teach him mathematics and consequently he was forced to do much on his own and so became prepared for university style of teaching.

... although this result was attributable to illness it undoubtedly disappointed him.

In my undergraduate days, now slightly more than a quarter of a century distant, the order of merit in the Mathematical Tripos still existed though its abolition had been decided upon; and, in certain circles, the discussion of the form of candidates and the places which they were likely to obtain in the next Tripos was not without interest; though the contest was, I think, free from any betting element, some impression of the general attitude to the examination may be gained by comparing it with the attitude of the sporting press to a forthcoming race. I have always got the impression from my father (who was a contemporary of Professor Forsyth) that in his time, a quarter of a century before mine, this interest in Tripos results as sporting events was considerably stronger.

At that time one lecture room at Edmund Street in the centre of Birmingham sufficed for all lectures in both pure and applied mathematics at the University, and there was no Honours School of Mathematics. Promising students took one year of post-graduate work to qualify for the degree of M.A. or M.Sc. It was Watson who brought the Honours School into being, and so widened the scope of the work that it became necessary to have two separate departments, one for Pure Mathematics and a second which developed into the Department of Mathematical Physics under Professor R E Peierls [in 1937]. All this development took place at the same time that Watson was also carrying out an enormous amount of work outside the University.

I first met Professor Watson when I became one of his students at Birmingham University. How well I remember his shy and sensitive manner and his quick movements. He was a man of very strong likes and dislikes and his reactions were sometimes a little unorthodox. Many a time, when something or someone annoyed him during a lecture his piece of chalk would come flying over the heads of us students and someone would duck to avoid it. Beneath all this he had a very genuine interest in, and desire to help, all his students. In those early days he owned a small, open, three-wheeled car. The back seat was completely inaccessible unless you climbed over the car itself, and to be one of his passengers dashing across Birmingham was sometimes rather a hazardous affair, especially when he had to negotiate tram lines. ... He was always very much aware of students' difficulties during their first year at the University and did much to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Here one felt was mathematics really happening before one's eyes. ... the older mathematical books were full of mystery and wonder. With Professor Watson we reached the period when the mystery is dispelled though the wonder remains.

... in recognition of his distinguished contributions to pure mathematics in the field of mathematical analysis and in particular for his work on asymptotic expansion and on general transforms.

The Mathematical Association has every reason to feel proud that a mathematician so distinguished as Watson should associate himself closely with its activities. He was elected President for the two years 1932 and 1933, being the last to hold office for more than one year, and was noted in committee for his mastery of detail and precise pertinent comments on items on the agenda. His first Presidential Address was called "The Marquis and the Land Agent, a tale of the 18th century". It concerned Fagnano and Landen and elliptic arcs; but the title beguiled an unwary journalist into attending; he left early! The second address on "Scraps from some mathematical notebooks" was on Gauss and the entries in his day-book. Watson was a great believer in going to the original works of the great mathematicians, rather than to their interpreters, and he also had the great gift of clarifying the sometimes obscure material of others. As a Vice-President of the Association he was a regular attender at Council meetings almost to the end of his life.

... deliberately abstained from attending the Congresses at Strassburg and Toronto in 1920 and 1924, for reasons which are now, happily, a matter of past history, and by my having been unavoidably prevented from going to Bologna in 1928; in fact my only previous experience of a Congress was gained at Cambridge in 1912.

He was the university's expert on the timetable; students with unusual combinations of subjects usually had to be referred to him for advice, and for many years after his retirement the dates of the academic year were governed by the "Watsonian cycle". ... He took great trouble with the style of his letters and his conversation and enjoyed finding a pungent phrase to express his points of view or his criticism ... he made no secret of his aversion to cars, telephones, and fountain pens. He loved trains - whose timetables were as familiar to him as those of the university lectures - and unusual stamps.

In manner and appearance (he always wore a wing collar) he recalled the professors of an earlier generation, and he was always very proud of his Fellowship at Trinity and delighted to entertain colleagues with remarks and tales from the High Table, around which, he was wont to say, one could always hear profound conversation on any subject under the sun. Yet the appearance belied the man, for, while he was somewhat difficult to get to know, when one did achieve this he was a very real friend, and there are many who will remember both his kindnesses and his assistance with their problems; he and his wife were most charming hosts to those whom they entertained at their house. ... He did not like telephones and regarded them as "an invention the devil". There was no Departmental Secretary during his time at Birmingham, and he carefully typed all examination papers from members of his staff himself, filling in the formulae most carefully with old-fashioned pen and nib. He preferred to discuss matters face to face with colleagues rather than write a letter and send it by internal post, and it may be that his long journeys on foot from one part of the University to another compensated for lack of other exercise, for he never seemed to suffer from ill-health. ... He took little exercise, apart from his walk to and from the station at Leamington and across Birmingham to catch the tram. Incidentally his pace of walking was such as to stretch his younger colleagues considerably, and pedestrians and traffic in the city appeared to split before his progress rather as the bow wave of a ship. At one time he drove a car, but he was never too happy with this, and forsook this method of transport when four-wheel brakes came into fashion.

Upon his death, Robert Rankin of the University of Glasgow, who had been Watson's immediate successor as the Mason Professor in Birmingham, was initially given the task of organising Watson's unpublished work. To his horror, Watson's widow showed him a room in their house, devoid of furniture, knee deep in unpublished manuscripts. These included a massive, but incomplete further edition of the Whittaker and Watson textbook, a monograph on 'Three Decades of Midland Railway Locomotives' and a great deal of material relating to Ramanujan. The task of further editing Watson's papers was given to E T Whittaker's son, J M Whittaker, who was appointed by the Royal Society to write Watson's obituary in its Biographical Memoirs.