Professor Timothy Williams

Timothy John Williams was born in Gloucester in 1945 and attended the local Sir Thomas Rich’s Grammar School. He obtained a BSc in Physiology at University College London and a PhD in Pharmacology at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology supervised by John Morley, with Heinz Schild at UCL as Director of Studies. His research on inflammatory mechanisms continued in the Pharmacology Department at the Royal College of Surgeons, followed by the Clinical Research Centre at Northwick Park. In 1988, he was awarded the Chair in Applied Pharmacology funded by Asthma UK at the National Heart & Lung Institute, later becoming the Head of Leukocyte Biology and Campus Dean in Medicine at Imperial College London. He became Emeritus Professor in 2010 and was elected FRS in 2012. His laboratory discovered synergism between vasodilator and permeability-increasing mediators, neutrophil-dependent increased microvascular permeability, the vasodilator activity of CGRP, and the eosinophil chemoattractant protein ‘Eotaxin’.