Obituary

David L Williams

David Williams was born in Wrexham in 1937, and after National Service in the Artillery stationed in Munster he studied Natural Sciences in Cambridge, going on to complete a PhD at the National Institute for Research into Dairying in Reading. After moving to Liverpool and from there studying Medicine as a remote student of Oxford University, he joined the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Surrey where he was one of the Lecturers for the new MSc in Clinical Biochemistry. David showed an early interest in publishing, joining the Editorial Board of the Annals of Clinical Biochemistry and going on to become its Executive Editor. He became Consultant Chemical Pathologist at St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey in 1978, and returned to Reading in 1983 when a new Chemical Pathologist post was created. Continuing his University links, he took over responsibility for the Pathobiology degree module initiated by Andras Tarnoky at the University of Reading. He held many important positions at the Royal Berkshire Hospital and elsewhere, but with his dislike of confrontation was perhaps unlucky in that his term of office as Clinical Director of Pathology coincided with a wave of staff cuts and voluntary redundancies. He was involved in laboratory accreditation at an early stage, and became Chairman of the UK Clinical Biochemistry Specialist Advisory Group on accreditation. The book David edited with Vincent Marks: ‘Scientific Foundations of Biochemistry in Clinical Practice’; was published in 1983 and became quite a standard textbook, a second edition being produced in 1994. Although he retired in 2002 he continued an interest in Clinical Biochemistry, joining the Communications and Publications Division of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and editing its web-based Journal; he had earlier developed international links with Mexico.

These are the bare bones of a distinguished career, and few within our profession knew anything about David’s outside life. During his National Service he competed in the Winter Olympics as a member of the British cross-country skiing team, but did not pursue this, preferring to spend time fixing classic cars in his driveway sometimes to the irritation of his neighbours: he would always prefer to buy a tool and learn how to use it than pay someone else to use it. He was a great proponent of computers and would spend hours exploring their potential and passing this information on to others. Very important to him, he was a licensed Methodist lay preacher and had a passionate love of hymns: Fanny Crosby’s ‘Blessed Assurance’ played at his funeral was one of his favourites. Perhaps most important was his love for gaining and imparting knowledge, and at the beginning of his lectures he would put up a slide and say ‘This is why I am teaching you, and this is the reason I am a doctor. These are my grandchildren’. His abiding legacy to us must be the many members of our profession who were inspired by his teaching to follow a career in Clinical Biochemistry. Our sympathy goes out to his wife Janis and to his family, of whom David was so proud.

Gordon S Challand