A.J.S. (Bill) Williams

A.J.S. (Bill) Williams’ life story and much of his career is founded on the inspiration provided by his chemistry teacher.  This led him in turn to inspire many school pupils with his lectures on “Colour” and “Science and Energy”, one of the key points being the encouragement of pupils to be “hands-on” during the presentations.  It is estimated that he and his colleagues have given these lectures to more than eighty thousand pupils and to many adults who have been privileged to have been invited to attend.  This part of his life’s work has been recognised by the award of the MBE and several prestigious scientific society medals and prizes.

Leaving school, Bill entered the civil service, but the war intervened and in 1940 Bill volunteered for the RAF.  He was sent to the USA via Canada to be taught to fly before being returned to the UK.  His instructors found that he had an aptitude as a trainer and as such, was more valuable in doing what came naturally to him, that is, instructing others to fly.  For instance, his log books show that he flew 4,500 teaching hours in twin-engine Oxfords.

Termination of hostilities found him educating servicemen again, but in this instance, for their return to civilian life.

At the same time he attended night school to gain the necessary qualifications to enter the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he took a first in Chemistry and joined the staff of the Organic Chemistry department.

Bill’s workload now included lectures, practical laboratories, tutorials and refurbishment of the Edward Davies Chemistry laboratories (EDCL).  The work was shared with John Bowen and Dr Samuel Graham and the pressure was alleviated somewhat by the arrival of Dr Harry Heller on the staff.  Bill found the time to play an important part in the West Wales section of the RSC.  He was interviewed on the BBC Radio Wales “Cafe Science” programme and was sometime Council Scientific Advisor.  In this latter capacity he was called out once to advise on the contents of a barrel washed up on the shore.  Red faces all around when Bill pronounced the contents to be lipstick!

Besides this activity, Bowen, Graham and Williams authorised a handbook entitled “A Student’s Handbook of Organic Qualitative Analysis” where all the derivatives were prepared in the EDCL and solids rigorously recrystallized to constant melting point.  Any spare time (!) was utilised by Bill and Dr Graham to research aspects of the chemistry of small ring compounds and oxime reductions which were published in prestigious international journals.  Many were the times when the strains of classical music emanated from their laboratory/office in the evenings as they carried out experimental work.

This leads to Bill’s other love, that of playing classical piano.  Bill was encouraged to learn the piano from the age of nine and carried his enthusiasm through to his nineties.  He was pleased to have mastered one of Mozart’s piano concertos.  Who will forget his 70th birthday when Bill and a close friend got all their musician friends to form an orchestra to play that particular piece, Bill being the soloist?

Bill was essentially a very kind and modest man but he was very pleased and surprised to have been selected as one of the “175 Faces of Chemistry” (this compilation gives further details and dates in Bill’s life).  He declared that his appearance in the same august selection which featured such as Borodin the composer and Frederic Soddy the Nobel Prize winner, who spent time at the EDCL, was not merited, but those of us who had the pleasure of knowing Bill and his life’s achievements, think differently.