Roger Stanley Williams

Abstract

Leading influence in UK liver medicine. He was born in Bexleyheath, UK, on Aug 28, 1931, and died in Southampton, UK, from a heart attack on July 26, 2020, aged 88 years. For most of the past 50 years Professor Roger Williams, Director of the Institute of Hepatology in London, UK, was a powerful force in UK liver medicine. “Acute liver failure, alcoholic liver disease, transplantation, viral hepatitis, paracetamol toxicity…he was influential in all of them”, according to Richard Thompson, Professor of Molecular Hepatology at King's College London. “I can't think of anybody else who, through their own initiative and drive, has set up two significant academic research units that were within a university, but had independence”, says Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, Director of the Liverpool Centre for Alcohol Research. “He trained many of the top leaders of hepatology”, adds Rajiv Jalan, Professor of Hepatology at University College London (UCL) Medical School. “There was a time at King's when he had 50 or 60 fellows. His trainees are now heads of units around the world.” Williams studied at the then London Hospital Medical College, graduating in 1953 and completing his subsequent training there and at two other London hospitals, the Queen Alexandra and the Hammersmith. His interest in hepatology was first roused while treating servicemen with liver disease at Queen Alexandra, a military hospital. Even more influential was his appointment in 1959 as a lecturer at the then Royal Free Hospital Medical School in London. His was one of the first academic posts created in a new department set up by the leading liver specialist, Professor Sheila Sherlock. Speaking of her in a 2013 Lancet profile Williams said, “I learnt a great deal from her, and in many ways modelled myself on her, and her approach.” It was his 1966 appointment as a consultant at King's College Hospital that gave him a base for the next 30 years. “He created the first liver unit in the country, and at that time one of the few in the world dedicated to care of people with liver disease, and to research”, says Thompson. Williams set up an Institute of Liver Studies; there was hardly a topic that escaped his attention. Hepatic disease in children illustrates his approach. As Thompson points out, “Roger realised there was an unmet need, so he recruited paediatrician Alex Mowat, who went on to more or less create the specialty of paediatric hepatology. [This new department] grew to become the largest paediatric liver department in the world.” In 1968, Williams collaborated with surgeon Professor Sir Roy Calne of Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, UK, to set up the team responsible for the UK's first liver transplantation programme. This highly productive partnership lasted for some 20 years. Speaking of Williams's track record in research and clinical work, Gilmore comments: “His strength was in his leadership…He was incredibly good at organising, raising money, and stimulating people to do research.” Williams's retirement from the UK National Health Service in 1996 was marked by a change in job, but not by a let-up in work. Indeed, of his lifetime's 2750 plus publications, no fewer than 340 appeared during the last decade of his life: his eighties. He set up a new Institute of Hepatology at UCL until, in 2014, he was invited to return to King's College London where, with the support of the Foundation for Liver Research, 2016 saw the opening of another new home for the institute. In 2014 Williams embarked on one of his final tasks: the oversight of the Lancet Standing Commission on Liver Disease in the UK. Its final report was published in November, 2019. Thompson points out that “in the last 40 years, while deaths in under 65 year olds from cancer, heart disease, and other major causes have all gone down, deaths…from liver disease have risen six-fold.” The Commission's work did much to raise awareness of this neglect and its consequences. “It's too early to talk about the legacy of the Commission”, says Gilmore, a contributor to it, “but I think liver disease would certainly have been the poorer without it.” Thompson describes Williams as “clear sighted and clear thinking…and forthright in making his opinions heard”. His height and loud booming voice gave him a presence. “He had absolute tenacity and dedication to liver research”, says Gilmore. “‘No’ wasn't an answer that he took readily.” Williams is survived by his wife Stephanie, their children, Clemency, Aidan, and Octavia, and by four other children, Bob, Anne, Debbie, and Andy from a previous marriage.