Robert Williams (chemist)

Robert Joseph Paton Williams MBE FRS (25 February 1926 – 21 March 2015) was an English chemist, an Emeritus Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford.

Williams was educated at Merton College, Oxford for both his Bachelor of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from 1944 to 1950. He then spent a year doing postdoctoral research with Arne Tiselius in the Biochemistry Laboratory at Uppsala, Sweden, where he met Jelly Büchli, whom he married in 1952.

A particular focus of his research was on bioinorganic chemistry. Together with Harry Irving he formulated the well-known Irving–Williams series.

Williams was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to the community in North Oxford.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1972 and was a Foreign Member of the Swedish, Portuguese, Czechoslovakian and Belgian science academies. He was a medallist of the Biochemical Society (twice), the Royal Society (twice), the Royal Society of Chemistry (three times), the European Biochemical Societies (twice) and the International Union of Biochemistry. He won the Royal Medal in 1995.