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Robert M. Williams was born in New York in 1953 and was raised in Huntington, Long Island by Edith and Valentine Williams. He attended Syracuse University from 1971-75 and received the B.A. degree in Chemistry in 1975. While at Syracuse, he did undergraduate research with Professor Ei-ichi Negishi in the area of hydroboration methodology. He then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and entered the Ph.D. program at MIT and obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1979 under the supervision of Professor William H. Rastetter. His doctoral studies were concerned with the total synthesis of two fungal metabolites, gliovictin and hyalodendrin. Following completion of his doctoral studies, he joined the laboratories of the late Professor R.B. Woodward in 1979 whose postdoctoral group was subsequently managed by Professor Yoshita Kishi. His postdoctoral work was concerned with the completion of the total synthesis of erythromycin A. Upon completion of his postdoctoral tenure at Harvard, he joined the faculty at Colorado State University in 1980. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1985 and Full Professor in l988, his current position. Dr. Williams has received several Honors and Awards including the NIH Research Career Development Award (1984-89); the Eli Lilly Young Investigator Award (1986); Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (1986); the Merck, Academic Development Award (1991); and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship (1999). He spent a sabbatical at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1990 in the laboratories of Professor Peter G. Schultz and was a visiting Professor at Harvard University in 1994 where he spent additional sabbatical time with Professor Stuart Schreiber. He serves on the Editorial Board of the journal Chemistry & Biology and is an Editor for the journal Amino Acids. He has also recently been appointed as a Series co-Editor for The Organic Chemistry Series, published by Pergamon Press/Elsevier with Professor Sir Jack E. Baldwin of Oxford. Dr. Williams was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Microcide Pharmaceutical Co. from 1993-98 located in Mountainview, California, and is a founding scientist, Member of the Scientific Advisory Board and Member of the Board of Directors of Xcyte Therapies, located in Seattle, Washington.
Dr. Williams' research results from the interplay of synthetic organic chemistry, microbiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology. Dr. Williams' research interests have included the total synthesis of natural products, the asymmetric synthesis of amino acids and peptide isosteres, studies on anti-tumor drug-DNA interactions, design and synthesis of antibiotics and DNA-cleaving molecules, combinatorial phage libraries and biosynthetic pathways. He has utilized natural products synthesis to probe and explore biomechanistic and biosynthetic problems with a particular emphasis on antitumor and antimicrobial antibiotics. He has developed technology for the asymmetric synthesis of a-amino acids and peptide isosteres that has been commercialized by Aldrich Chemical Co. has has written a monograph on this subject.
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