Researching Roger Williams

Williams was expelled by the Puritan leaders from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and established Providence Plantations in 1636 as a refuge offering what he termed "liberty of conscience." In 1638, he founded the First Baptist Church in America, in Providence. Williams studied the indigenous languages of New England and published the first book-length study of a native North American language in English.

In his writings on the art of war, Williams was a strong advocate of the modernisation of armies and the exploitation of new military technologies.

Some Shakespeare scholars have suggested that he was the basis for the pugnacious Welsh captain Fluellen in William Shakespeare's Henry V, a character who is also both argumentative and unflinchingly loyal.

He was a Navy boxing champion, played for nine U.S. Presidential administrations, and had a gold Steinway & Sons grand piano model named in his honor.

He was educated at St Mary's College, Southampton, and The London Hospital Medical College (now Barts and Royal London Medical School), graduating MBBS in 1949. After National Service in the RAMC, he worked at the Postgraduate Medical School, London and between 1959-1965 was a Lecturer in Medicine in Professor Sheila Sherlock's Liver Unit at the Royal Free Hospital, including a year as the Rockefeller Travelling Fellow in Medicine at the Presbyterian Hospital, New York.

Appointed as Clinical Tutor and Consultant Physician at King's College Hospital in 1966, he set up a Unit dedicated to research into liver disorders based on multidisciplinary groups of scientists, physicians and surgeons. Together with Sir Roy Calne, he pioneered liver transplantation in the UK, the first liver transplant at King's College Hospital being carried out on September 28, 1968. Other pioneering work in acute liver failure led to the first dedicated unit for patients with this condition. The Liver Unit was recognised in 1992 by King's College London as an Institute of Liver Studies.

In 1996, Roger Williams moved to a new research Institute at University College London, funded by the Foundation for Liver Research. New areas of translational clinical study were initiated including Living Donor Liver Transplantation and devices for temporary liver support. His return to King's College Hospital in June 2016 followed an invitation from the Chairman of the Hospital to relocate the Institute of Hepatology to that site.

Professor Williams received numerous awards and medals, the most notable of these being the Distinguished Achievement Award of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease in 2013, the first British subject to have this honour. Other awards include the American Society of Transplantation Senior Achievement Award in 2004, a Hans Popper Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, and the Distinguished Service Award of the International Liver Transplant Society in 2011. He was a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Honorary Fellow of the American College of Physicians and of the Irish College of Physicians. He was a founder member of European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), serving as Chairman in 1983 and as Honorary President in 2008. He was appointed CBE for services to medicine in 1993. He was the author of approximately 3000 papers, chapters and reviews published in learned journals and books. In 2010 he was quoted as the most cited researcher of the year in his specialty by ISI Thomson Scientific.

Professor Williams practiced at King's College Hospital and in the Harley Street Diagnostic Clinic until he died in 2020.

Outside medicine, his interests were opera, piano music and sport. He enjoyed tennis and yacht racing and was a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron and Royal Ocean Racing Club.

He died on 26 July 2020 at the age of 88.

He was born at Newport, Wales, and brought up in Carmarthen. He graduated in 1995 from the University of Warwick with a degree in English and American Literature.

His theatre work includes:* Surfing, Carmarthen Bay (1995)* Love in Aberdare (1997)* Gulp (1997)* Calon Lân (1997)* Saturday Night Forever (1998)* Killing Kangaroos (1999)* Pop (2000)* Y Byd (A'i Brawd) (2004)* Me, a Giant (2005)* Mother Tongue (2005)* "Kapow!" (2006)* "Tir Sir Gâr" (2013)

In 2002, his work Tales from the Pleasure Beach, screened on BBC Two, was nominated for a BAFTA Award in the Best Drama Series category. He has also written episodes of "Hollyoaks" (Channel 4), "The Story of Tracy Beaker" (BBC), "The Bench" (BBC Wales), "Citizens!" (BBC Wales) and many episodes of the daily Welsh-language soap opera Pobol y Cwm which is broadcast on S4C. In 2006, he became the lead writer of S4C's popular new drama series "Caerdydd", for which he won a Bafta in 2011.

In 2012 he established the production company Joio. The company's first production was the film "Tir" for S4C. The film was adapted from Roger Williams's original theatre play "Tir Sir Gâr" for which he won the Best Welsh language Playwright award at the Wales Theatre Critics Awards 2014.

Williams has directed a number of acclaimed films including Life, Animated, which won the Sundance Film Festival Directing Award, was nominated for an Academy Award and won three Emmys in 2018, including the award for Best Documentary. He also directed God Loves Uganda, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award and American Jail, which examined the U.S. prison system and premiered on CNN. Williams’ directed Traveling While Black, a VR documentary made for Facebook’s Oculus, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. His most recent film, The Apollo, a documentary about Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater, was the opening night film of the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and he is currently in pre-production on his first narrative feature film for Amazon Studios.

His production company, One Story Up, is producing a variety of projects including two limited documentary series for Netflix.

Since 2016, Williams has been on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, serving as chair of the Documentary Branch and the documentary Diversity Committee. Williams serves on the Alumni Advisory Board of the Sundance Institute, the Advisory Board of Full Frame Festival, and the boards of the Tribeca Film Institute, Docubox Kenya, None On Record and the Zeitz Museum Of Contemporary Art Africa. He resides in New York and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.