Williams
Patent No. 2,049,988
Robert R. Williams, Jr., who was born February 16, 1886 in Nellore, India, spent much of his life outside the United States. The son of Baptist Missionaries, he was introduced early to the suffering caused by malnutrition. Beriberi, common among rice-eating people in Asia, caused nerve disorders, body swelling, and death.
When he was ten, Williams' family returned to the United States, where the children attended school in Ottawa, Kansas. Williams got his B.S. (1907) and an M.S. (1908) in chemistry from the University of Chicago.
But the East lured him back. He taught school in the Philippine Hill country while awaiting a job opening in the Manila Bureau of Science. Here he began a twenty-five year search for a cure for Beriberi. Back in the U.S. during World War I, he was recalled to the Washington, D.C. Bureau of Science to work on war projects. To support a wife and family, he took a job with the Bell Telephone Company in New York, serving as Chemical Director, a position he held for 20 years.
His vitamin research was conducted in his spare time with the aid of grants and space provided by Columbia University and others. Williams isolated thiamine in crystalline form in 1933 and synthesized Vitamin B1 two years later. Merck & Co. began commercial production of thiamine in 1936. In 1942, Williams' patent was a fore-runner in the field of chemically-reconstructed vitamins.
Williams, in addition to his interest in curing Asian deficiency diseases, was instrumental in achieving the enrichment of flour, cornmeal and other cereal grains in this country, thus wiping out the pellagra and riboflavin deficiency common among poor people. Royalty money from his vitamin patents was channeled back to the Williams-Waterman Fund for the Combat of Dietary Diseases worldwide and into further research projects.
Williams received numerous honors from chemical and scientific organizations and universities. He passed away on October 2, 1965 in Summit, New Jersey.
The above information was supplied by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., Room 1D01-Crystal Plaza 3, 2021 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202. Videotapes and printed materials are currently available. For more information, visit the Foundation's web site at http://www.invent.org
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