Edward Emrys Watkin (1900–1978): marine zoologist and educator

The Welsh marine zoologist, Edward Emrys Watkin (1900–1978), studied the population dynamics of Cardigan Bay herring stocks in the 1920s and subsequently worked on amphipod crustaceans in the Clyde Sea Area in Scotland. His published works span a transitional period in the history of biology, when natural history was being formalized into ecology. A graduate, and a staff member, of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, for 45 years he inspired students with his teaching. His experiences as a teacher and examiner were called upon when, in 1965 and 1971, he edited and co-wrote Biology (with Herbert Tisdale Conway and John Brinley Jones), a textbook on biology for pupils seeking the General Certificate of Education (GCE) O-level qualification. However, the impact of Watkins’s book was lessened because of competition from Donald Gordon Mackean’s Introduction to biology published first in 1962.