William Robert Williams

If there had been a learned and gentle “Information Please,” Dr. William R. Williams could have been its star performer—except for the circumstance that he would never seek stardom and never performed. That is to say, he never cited facts as facts separated from a line of thought; his great knowledge was used only to carry forward and illuminate intellectual activity. One became aware of it only through a generalization, or a synthesis of lightning intensity—but gently intense and never followed by thunder.

He spoke rarely, apparently because he did not feel the necessity and, be it added, neither did his auditors, if such they could be called. In his presence there were no dreadful silences but only beautiful, understanding silences—understanding flowing both ways, from him and to him. His love of music was fundamental, and revealing: it was complete communication without words.

His career as physician was distinguished in the profession and without publicity. Though he was an unremitting student of scientific advances in medicine, his emphasis was on the practice of medicine as a healing art. The whole man was reassuring to the ill. His smile was doubtless as valuable to his patients as his great knowledge. He never claimed much for the latter and he died in his sleep of a long-standing ailment no colleague, nor he, could treat. There was a touch of the sardonic in him and he might well have thought that it served him right. But no patient of his would have thought anything of the kind.

Geoffrey Parsons
1940 Century Memorials