Dr

William Williams

OBE FAA

William Williams
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Dr. Williams has made distinguished contributions in two fields of biology, first in plant physiology and then in taxonomy and ecology. His early career was devoted to plant-water relationships, where he conducted penetrating studies in the water-relations of the epidermis, the physics of transpiration from wilting leaves, and the mechanism of drought resistance. Subsequently, he has made important advances in the numerical analysis of biological data, in the process producing the first successful computer based systems for the monothetic classification of binary data and devising the complete set of algorithms which underlie the TAXON classificatory package, the first such package to be capable of processing mixed data with missing values. He then turned to the problem of analysis of species-rich floras, and produced a now classic series of papers on the analysis of rainforest vegetation. More recently he has turned his attention to the use of numerical techniques in the analysis of agricultural data.

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Related

Memoir

William Thomas Williams 1913-1995

Bill Williams was born in Fulham, London, on 18 April 1913, the only child of Thomas and Clara Williams. His father suffered from asthma and so had left Wales, where he had been a coalminer, to work in London but at what has not been ascertained. Whatever it was, his mother found it necessary to work as a midwife and charlady to ensure that Bill received a good education. Having no siblings, Bill spent much of his childhood at the home of his lifelong friend and scientific colleague David Goodall, whose family he sometimes accompanied on their annual holidays.
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