Watson, Lyall 1939-2008 (Malcolm Lyall-Watson)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born April 12, 1939, in Johannesburg, South Africa; died of a stroke, June 25, 2008, in Gympie, Queensland, Australia. Naturalist, anthropologist, ethologist, explorer, zoo director, author, and television producer and presenter. Watson lived in many countries, on both land and sea, before settling in Ireland, but he seemed most comfortable at the edge of the empirical, or provable world, and his curiosity knew no bounds. At one time or another, he studied most of the "hard" and "soft" sciences, and his lifework was always interdisciplinary. Watson explored the natural and supernatural worlds with equal vigor. His scientific expeditions took him to the unexplored corners of the globe, and each discovery added to his body of knowledge. Inevitably, perhaps, he was drawn to one of the most mysterious and underexplored territories: the human mind. Defining Watson's career would defy traditional classification, but he did work for brief periods as the director of the Johannesburg zoo and as a documentary film producer and reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation. He operated a safari company in Africa and started a whale sanctuary in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. For most of his adult life, however, Watson was on the move: leading expeditions to Antarctica, the Amazon, Indonesia, and other exotic places; working as an archaeologist in the Middle East and an anthropologist in Africa. Watson also found time to write at least twenty books, most of which were controversial and many of which, not surprisingly, became best sellers. They include Supernature: The Natural History of the Supernatural (1973), Lifetide: The Biology of the Unconscious (1979), The Dreams of Dragons: Riddles of Natural History (1987), The Nature of Things: The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects (1990), and Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil (1995).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Watson, Lyall, By the River of the Elephants: An African Childhood, Kingfisher (New York, NY), 1997.

Watson, Lyall, Warriors, Warthogs, and Wisdom: Growing Up in Africa (juvenile), illustrated by Keith West, Kingfisher (New York, NY), 1997.

PERIODICALS

New York Times, July 21, 2008, p. A17.

Times (London, England), July 10, 2008, p. 58.