Gareth Williams

Gareth Williams MD ScD FRCP FRCPE is Emeritus Professor and former Dean of Medicine at the University of Bristol. He graduated from Cambridge, trained in London and Geneva and specialised in diabetes and obesity, building up an internationally recognised research group in Liverpool.

He published over 200 papers on diabetes, obesity and neuroendocrinology, and edited and contributed to 20 medical textbooks including the prize-winning Textbook of Diabetes and the chapter on diabetes for the Oxford Textbook of Medicine. Since retiring, he has written books for general readers about the history of medicine and science: Angel of Death: the story of smallpox (shortlisted for the Wellcome Medical Book Prize 2010), Paralysed with Fear: the story of polio (2013), A Monstrous Commotion: the mysteries of Loch Ness (2015), and Unravelling the Double Helix: the lost heroes of DNA (2019). He is currently working on Tube Alloys: the birth of the atomic bomb. Gareth has served as President of the Anglo-French Medical Society and Chair of the Trustees of the Edward Jenner Museum, and is proud to be an Ambassador of the British Polio Fellowship. He is often to be found playing classical music or jazz on the flute and saxophone.