Watson, Thomas J. Jr. (1914 - 1993)
Role: Vice Chancellor, Trustee, FellowDates: 1948 - 1993
Portrait Location: Sayles Hall 108
Artist: Martin, John ()
Portrait Date: 2002
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
Framed Dimensions:
Brown Portrait Number: 280
Brown Historical Property Number: 0
Thomas Watson is widely remembered as the man who led IBM into the computer age. He graduated from Brown in 1937 and immediately went to work as a salesman with his father's firm, IBM. After serving with distinction in the Air Force in World War II, Watson returned to IBM, becoming president at age thirty-eight and chairman four years later. Watson pioneered innovative, employee-centered management strategies similar to those that became the hallmark of business success decades later. An active Democrat and advocate of arms control, Watson served on a presidential disarmament committee and as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union under President Carter. Throughout his career, Watson remained committed to Brown University, serving the Corporation as trustee 1948-1955, as vice chancellor 1979-1985, and as a fellow or Advisory Committee member in the interim years, as well as active consultant to a half-dozen university presidents. Watson founded a number of academic fellowship programs at Brown, computing and technology centers, including the CIT, and his signature program, the Watson Institute for International Studies, with nearly a dozen affiliated policy centers, interdisciplinary programs, and academic offices related to international relations and the study of foreign societies.
Kansas artist John Martin painted Watson's likeness posthumously from a number of photographs in the archives of Brown and IBM. Consultations with the Watson children assured the artist that the vice chancellor, without a doubt, would be wearing a blue suit.