Trevor Illtyd Williams


Trevor Illtyd Williams was a British chemist; a historian of science; a science author; and a journal editor. He sat on a number of science advisory committees, steering groups and related bodies.

Education

Clifton College, Bristol. Queen's College, Oxford: BSc, MA, and DPhil on the isolation of helvolic acid and other antibiotics.

Career

Williams was an author and the editor of a number of science journals and a member of several science advisory committees, steering groups and councils.

Author

Trevor Williams was an author on a range of scientific topics, particularly chemistry. His most significant contribution is considered to be his A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists. His book The Chemical Industry Past and Present was republished as an Open University set book for science and technology courses. In his foreword to A History of the British Gas Industry'' he states that ‘I have been interested in the history of science and technology, both as a discipline in its own right and as a complement to political, economic and social history’. He goes on to say that the British gas industry ‘has a particular appeal’ for there are few industries which so clearly ‘illustrate the consequences of the interplay of all these factors’.

Editor

Williams was editor of the following journals:Endeavour,, 1945–94Annals of Science,, 1966–74Outlook on Agriculture,, 1982–89

Other posts

He was appointed by ICI Ltd as an Academic Relations Advisor, 1962–74, where he was involved in the distribution of postdoctoral fellowships and research grants, and took part in negotiations between universities, industry and government.
Williams was a member of the following organisations:
  • Society for the Study of Alchemy and Early Chemistry, chair, 1967–86
  • English Language Book Society, Steering Committee member, 1984–90
  • Science Museum, advisory Council member, 1972–84
  • World List of Scientific Periodicals, chair, 1966–88
  • Council of University College Swansea, member, 1965–83

Awards and achievements

Williams received the Dexter Award of the American Chemical Society in 1976, for his contribution to the history of chemistry.
He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Publications

Williams was the author of the following books:An Introduction to Chromatography, Blackie, London, 1946Drugs from Plants, Sigma, London, 1947The Soil and the Sea, Saturn Press, 1949The Chemical Industry Past and Present, Penguin, 1953The Elements of Chromatography, Blackie and Son, 1954A History of Technology: volumes I to V, Oxford University Press, 1954–58Alchemy, 1957A Short History of Technology, Oxford University Press, 1960
  • Science and Technology: chapter III in New Cambridge Modern History, volume XI, Cambridge University Press, 1967Alexander Findlay’s A Hundred Years of Chemistry, 1965A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, A and C Black Ltd, 1968 & 1994Alfred Bernhard Nobel, 1973James Cook, Priory Press, 1974, Man the Chemist, Priory Press, 1976, A History of Technology, volumes VI and VII: The Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, 1978A History of the British Gas Industry, Oxford University Press, 1981, A Short History of Twentieth Century Technology, Oxford University Press, 1982, European Research Centres, 1982This is Industrial Research in the United Kingdom: a Guide to Organisations and Programmes, FT Pharmaceuticals, 1983, Howard Florey: penicillin and after, Oxford University Press, 1984, The Triumph of Invention, Little Brown Book Group, 1987, Robert Robinson, Chemist Extraordinary, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990, Science: invention and discovery in the twentieth century, Chambers, 1990, Our Scientific Heritage: an A-Z of Great Britain and Ireland'', Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1996,

Personal life

Williams was born on 16 July 1921 in Bristol, the son of Illtyd Williams and Alma Mathilde Sohlberg. He married in 1945, in London, Minnie L Margolis; divorced 1952. He married secondly in 1952, in Westminster London, Sylvia Irène Armstead. They had five children: four sons and one daughter. He gave his recreations as gardening and hill walking.
Trevor Illtyd Williams died on 12 October 1996 at the John Radcliffe Hospital Oxford, following an operation. His estate was valued at £1,097,876 in January 1997.