Wataghin was hired in 1934 to found with other European physicists the Department of Physics of the recently founded University of São Paulo. There, he was the tutor of a group of young physicists, such as César Lattes, Oscar Sala, Mário Schenberg, Roberto Salmeron, Marcelo Damy de Souza Santos and Jayme Tiomno. The Institute of Physics of the State University of Campinas, in Campinas, Brazil, was named in his honour, as well as a prize in Physics. In 1955, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of São Paulo.