The following appears (with a photo and other material) in The Journal of Applied Nutrition 1988; 40(2):121-125, copyright 1988, Int. Acad. Nutr. Prev. Med. Reprints available.

IN MEMORIAM

Roger John Williams
1893-1988

Upbringing and Early Experiences

Later Interests and Accomplishments

Roger John Williams’s death on 20 February 1988 at the age of 94 brought to a close an extraordinary lifetime of contributions to biochemistry, nutritional science, human health and welfare, and public knowledge. Through his many books and hundreds of scientific articles he eloquently expressed his restless, prolific intellect and his down-to-earth striving for the betterment of humankind. His books powerfully influenced a generation of forward-looking scientists, physicians, students, and laypersons. As probably no other scientist has, he led the way toward a broad view of nutrition and its importance in health and preventive medicine, including the prevention of alcoholism. Almost singlehandedly he recognized and called attention to the biological facts of human diversity and their broad importance in science and human affairs.

Williams’s last days came nearly the way that most of us would want ours to come--following a long and fruitful life, filled with the love and admiration of family and friends, and blessed with a mind still creative and focused on the goals and joys of his life. Although physically frail, and dependent on nursing home care for two years, he was comfortable and content. He entertained visitors from his chair, delighting them with his keen memory and wry sense of humor. Through his chair-side radio he followed world events and his favorite University of Texas athletic teams. Sometimes he asked University colleagues to bring his latest book manuscript on their next visit, for he had ideas to improve it. Two days after one such request, he died of pneumonia, the “old man’s friend.”

More than most of us can hope for, Williams’s life was also filled with extraordinary gifts and accomplishments. For over 20 years he and his coworkers worked to discover, isolate, characterize and synthesize the substance he named pantothenic acid, an essential cog in the biochemical machinery of all living things. He also first concentrated and named folic acid, another B vitamin. As founder and director of the Clayton Foundation Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas at Austin from 1940 to 1963, he and his colleagues made many other notable contributions to nutrition and biochemistry. [Since 1992 the Institute is known as the Biochemical Institute.]

But beyond these extraordinary scientific accomplishments, Williams was a deep and independent thinker, a visionary, and a gifted writer. For over 40 years following completion of his work on pantothenic acid, he increasingly turned his efforts toward advancing the fields of nutrition, medicine, and human understanding. He took seriously, and in a practical way, the idea that the highest purpose of science and all human striving is to benefit humankind in one way or another. He never quit seeking this goal, even after his retirement at age 92 when he no longer could come to his University office to work. Through his writings he inspired new generations of professionals and laypersons who form the advance guard of a dynamic movement. I and many others well remember the profound impact on our thinking and work of his books such as Nutrition in A Nutshell, Biochemical Individuality, You Are Extraordinary, and Nutrition Against Disease.

Inevitably, Williams’s maverick ideas faced resistance, especially from some physicians, old-line nutritionists and social scientists whose established beliefs conflicted too much with his ideas. He was probably seldom content with the pace his campaigns advanced. Some failed, like his attempts to interest universities and scientific bodies in studying human diversity as a way to help society foster human development and to advance social and international harmony. Nevertheless, his key ideas about the importance of nutrition and variability have gradually gained acceptance. He was pleased by many signs that we are beginning the “renaissance of nutritional science” that he and his coauthors forecast in 1973. Perhaps more than he could know, he helped inspire both the leaders of this renaissance and the various grass-roots movements that are helping to push it along. Transformations such as he envisioned require a generation or more to take hold, and this one is advancing probably as rapidly as can be realistically expected.

Upbringing and Early Experiences

Roger was born on 14 August 1893 to American Baptist missionaries working in Ootacumund, India. Brought to the United States at age two, he grew up in Kansas and California. He was the youngest of four brothers and a sister who were 5 to 10 years older than he. Many years later in 1974 he wrote, “This age gap tended to make me a ‘loner,’ and more inclined toward self-reliance and independence than I might have been. . . . [It] probably contributed toward making me the kind of scientist I have become.” His father was 55 years old when Roger was born, and suffered a crippling hip injury the following year, so Roger never knew his father in his prime. As a youth Roger held interests at various times in the ministry, medicine, literature, and writing, and he enjoyed baseball and other athletics with his brothers. He worked in a nursery where he learned to bud fruit trees, a skill which helped support his college education. His oldest brother, Robert R. Williams, became known for his work on beriberi and the isolation and synthesis of thiamin (vitamin B₁).

Roger received his B.S. from the University of Redlands in 1914 and a high school teacher’s certificate in 1915 from the University of California, Berkeley. There he earned his room and board waiting on tables at a fraternity house and cleaning his landlady’s house. His studies in organic chemistry left him discouraged about his potential as a chemist. However, after teaching high school chemistry and physics for two years and marrying Hazel E. Wood, a college classmate with whom he would have three children, he decided to resume graduate work in chemistry at the University of Chicago, where his three brothers had graduated. A professor there, Julius Stieglitz, “lifted organic chemistry out of the hopeless state (for me) of being merely something to memorize.” He received his M.S. degree in 1918 and his Ph.D. in 1919 (Magna Cum Laude), writing his thesis on The Vitamin Requirement of Yeast. The goal of this work and a subsequent year with the Fleischmann (Yeast) Co. was to learn what yeast cells need to grow.

This early work with yeast cells greatly influenced much of Williams’s later work and thinking. It led most directly to his discovery of pantothenic acid as a yeast nutrient and to the subsequent studies that spanned two decades at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and the University of Texas. Later it led Williams and his colleagues at the University of Texas to use other microorganisms for pioneering research in nutrition and biochemistry. This work helped shift the interest of biochemists toward microbiology and its rich harvest of knowledge about enzymology, genetics, and molecular biology. These advances fully supported Williams’s early and novel intuition that something needed by yeast cells could also be important for plant and animal cells--the now well recognized biochemical unity of all living things. His experiences with growing yeast cells also contributed to his later idea that nutrition is always improvable, and to the major theme of his 1971 book, Nutrition Against Disease. In it he proposed and defended his idea “that the nutritional microenvironment of our body cells is crucially important to our health and that deficiencies in this environment constitute a major cause of disease” (p. 4).

Eyesight difficulties also had an early and enduring influence on Williams’ career. Although he had keen vision, and enjoyed books, his two eyes did not work together well. Reading was a chore, like “walking uphill dragging a log,” he recalled in 1954, and he could not endure it for more than short periods. Eyeglasses, exercises and an operation failed to help much, and for some years he read with one eye at a time. Later, special eyeglasses for severe “aniseikonia” (a disorder not discovered until about 1930) helped some, but still reading was difficult. Williams came to regard this problem as a blessing, however, and not a curse. Because he could not spend long hours reading, he had long hours to think, and he was able to do so in a most productive way. Unlike most scientists who read extensively about a problem before developing their own ideas, Williams thought about it first, before his mind became “excessively cluttered up by what everyone else has thought and written.” No doubt his eyesight problem contributed to his originality and iconoclasm.

It prepared him, too, for his mid-eighties when macular degeneration gradually consumed all ability to read. He had long since developed the practice of thinking and writing in his head at night, so he merely shifted to dictating his work and having it read to him. Fortunately, he retained enough peripheral vision to continue his long devotion to walking for exercise (fishing and golfing were passions in earlier years).

Another significant early experience followed an ulcer operation in about 1921. Williams was given morphine to relieve pain and induce sleep. It abolished his pain, but rather than inducing sleep, it caused his mind to race. His doctor’s remedy was to administer another, larger dose, for which “There was hell to pay.” Williams was tortured through a long night of excruciating mental frenzy. His doctor’s explanation that Williams had suffered an “idiosyncratic” reaction to morphine provoked his curiosity and helped inspire his later major interest in biochemical individuality.

Later Interests and Accomplishments

In 1939 Williams became professor of chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin. The next year, with support from Benjamin Clayton of Houston, Williams founded at the University the Clayton Foundation Biochemical Institute and served as its director until 1963, when he turned 70. During that time more vitamins and their variants were discovered in this laboratory than in any other. Pioneering work was done on pantothenic acid, folic acid, folinic acid, pyridoxal and pyridoxamine (forms of vitamin B₆), inositol, and lipoic acid. Raw egg white was found to contain a protein which tightly binds biotin, a protein that Williams named avidin. These studies were facilitated by two important techniques developed or used in early work at the Institute--microbiological assays for vitamins and amino acids, and ascending paper chromatography. Patented processes for the synthesis of pantothenic acid and vitamin B₁₂ brought substantial funds to the University as well as to other organizations.

In the mid-1940s, following the synthesis of pantothenic acid and the successful launching of the Clayton Foundation Biochemical Institute, Williams increasingly focused his attention on how science and education could improve human life and help solve common human problems. Significantly, in his first book for a broad audience he wrote, “The ultimate goal of our efforts is social welfare.” (The Human Frontier, 1946). His chapter titles cite major themes that recur in many of his writings over the next 40 years. These themes include humanics--the science of humankind, the senses and social behavior, metabolism in relation to character traits, education, heredity and environment, employment, marriage, tolerance for others, criminology, psychology and medicine, religion, and international relations.

Williams pointed out that individual differences are deeply entwined in virtually all human problems. “Scientific” efforts to solve health or social problems, for example, are both hampered and fundamentally misleading if they focus on the mythical “average person.” In their efforts to discover generalities, scientists tend to ignore and obscure individual differences, and Williams argued repeatedly over the years that we need to study and understand individuals, not “man.”

Although Williams was not a gifted speaker (he sometimes mentioned this trait), he was extraordinarily able to present his ideas clearly and eloquently in his many books and articles. He devoted much time to thinking, writing and rewriting. He sought comments and criticisms of his work from colleagues and friends, many of them nationally and internationally prominent in diverse fields. For months, or sometimes years, he pondered and revised his important manuscripts. These efforts yielded a legacy of articles and books of remarkably enduring value. The passage of 20 to 40 years has hardly diminished their interest and pertinence. Biochemical Individuality remained in print for over 30 years [now over 40 years], a most unusual feat in science. It and several other books were also translated into other languages, and two have been reissued in English (see accompanying book list).

Williams’s accomplishments earned him many honors, including the Mead-Johnson Award (American Institute of Nutrition, 1941); the Chandler Medal (Columbia University, 1942, received jointly with his brother, Robert); election to the National Academy of Sciences (1946); presidency of the American Chemical Society (1957, the first biochemist elected to this post); D.Sc. degrees from the University of Redlands (1934), Columbia University (1942), and Oregon State University (1956); and the Nutrition Award of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation (1983).

Widowed in 1952, Williams married Mabel Phyllis Hobson the following year. A vivacious woman now in her 80s, Phyllis was a beloved confidant and companion on numerous world travels that Williams enjoyed recalling during his last months. He belonged to a Methodist church, but his deeply religious philosophy was nonsectarian. One of his last articles was entitled, “Can We Integrate Moral Principles With Science and Learning?” (The Texas Humanist, 1984). In it he stressed the importance of non-material ideas and ideals in both science and life.

[The following paragraph is mostly obsolete in 1999] In 1986 the International Academy of Preventive Medicine proposed to establish and support a private foundation dedicated to furthering Williams’s goals. Named the Roger J. Williams Nutrition Institute for Disease Prevention Research and Education, it was founded in July 1987, with me as Director. The Williams Institute will, to the extent that its resources permit, encourage research and education to advance nutrition and preventive medicine. It also will publish Williams’s last book, Exploring Your Individuality: A Vital Step Toward Human Understanding, and strive to keep available Williams’s other writings. Friends and admirers of Roger J. Williams are invited to join our efforts to advance the work and goals of this most remarkable man.

Donald R. Davis, Ph.D.
Clayton Foundation Biochemical Institute
The University of Texas
Austin, Texas 78712