Professor Dudley Howard Williams MA, SCD, FRS

25 May 1937 — 3 November 2010

Fellow 1964 – 2010

Dudley Williams was elected to a Teaching Fellowship at Churchill College in 1964 following his appointment as a University Teaching Officer in the Department of Chemistry. He was to hold fellowships under several titles over the years including election to a Senior Research Fellowship in 1974, an Extraordinary Fellowship in 1989, a Professorial Fellowship and then a Pensioner Fellowship in 2004 on his retirement from the University.

Dudley was awarded a PhD from Leeds University in 1961 for work on the synthesis of the Vitamin D, and went to Stanford University for two years, first as a Fulbright Scholar and then as a Research Associate. He returned to Cambridge and was awarded an ScD by the University in 1972. He was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1983 and was appointed Deputy Director of the Cambridge Centre for Molecular Recognition in 1988. Dudley had a prodigious output. In the period 1965–78 alone, the Institute for Scientific Information listed him as the world's most cited organic chemist outside the United States. He was also the most cited scientist in the University of Cambridge in that period, and the most cited chemist in the UK.

Dudley served on many College committees over the years and made an important contribution to Governing Body debate.