William Thomas Williams

FAA The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(18 April 1913 – 15 October 1995) was an English and Australian

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

and

plant taxonomist Plant taxonomy is the science that finds, identifies, describes, classifies, and names plants. It is one of the main branches of taxonomy (the science that finds, describes, classifies, and names living things). Plant taxonomy is closely allied ...

, known for his work on

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...

s for

numerical taxonomy Numerical taxonomy is a classification system in biological systematics which deals with the grouping by numerical methods of taxonomic units based on their character states. It aims to create a taxonomy using numeric algorithms like cluster anal ...

...

Biography

Williams was born 18 April 1913 in

Fulham Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea. The area faces Wandsworth ...

, London, England, the only child of a Welsh coal miner. He went to the Stationers' Company's School in London and then to the Imperial College of Science and Technology, also in London, from which he earned a bachelor's degree 1933, a PhD and diploma in 1940, and a D.Sc. in 1956. While studying for his PhD, Williams taught at Imperial College from 1933 to 1936, and at Sir John Cass Technical College from 1936 to 1940. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he served in the

Royal Artillery The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...

, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, and

Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers The Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME ) is a corps of the British Army that maintains the equipment that the Army uses. The corps is described as the "British Army's Professional Engineers". History Prior to REME's for ...

. He enlisted as a private (neglecting to inform the military about his degrees) but eventually reached the rank of major. After the war, he became a lecturer at

Bedford College for Women Bedford College was in York Place after 1874 Bedford College was founded in London in 1849 as the first higher education college for women in the United Kingdom. In 1900, it became a constituent of the University of London The University o ...

, where he stayed from 1946 to 1951. He then moved to the

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

, where he was professor of botany and head of the department of botany from 1951 to 1965. In 1965, Williams' former Southampton colleague Godfrey Lance invited him to visit the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in

Canberra, Australia Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The c ...

. A year later, Williams moved to CSIRO himself, at the same time becoming an Australian citizen. He worked in CSIRO's Division of Computing Research in Canberra from 1966 to 1968, and then transferred to the Division of Tropical Pastures in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...

, where he worked from 1968 to 1973. Williams retired from CSIRO in 1973, at which point he moved from Brisbane to Townsville. During his retirement he continued to work as a consultant for several institutions.

Research

Williams' early work was on

plant physiology Plant physiology is a subdiscipline of botany concerned with the functioning, or physiology, of plants. Closely related fields include plant morphology (structure of plants), plant ecology (interactions with the environment), phytochemistry (bi ...

, and more specifically on leaf expansion and the function of the

Stoma In botany, a stoma (from Greek ''στόμα'', "mouth", plural "stomata"), also called a stomate (plural "stomates"), is a pore found in the epidermis of leaves, stems, and other organs, that controls the rate of gas exchange. The pore is bor ...

ta. However, while at Southampton he became interested in more mathematical and statistical research topics such as the spatial distribution of plants. At the same time, he began writing software for his statistical analysis, using the

Ferranti Pegasus Pegasus was an early British vacuum-tube (valve) computer built by Ferranti, Ltd that pioneered design features to make life easier for both engineers and programmers. Originally it was named the Ferranti Package Computer as its hardware design ...

computer then available at Southampton's computer centre. The centre's director, Godfrey Lance, was later to become a regular research collaborator of Williams. Williams' most heavily cited research work, with Lance, makes the observation that five different

hierarchical clustering In data mining and statistics, hierarchical clustering (also called hierarchical cluster analysis or HCA) is a method of cluster analysis that seeks to build a hierarchy of clusters. Strategies for hierarchical clustering generally fall into ...

strategies then in use could all be related to each other: all five use formulas for the distance between clusters that vary only in the weights of certain numerical coefficients. This unification allowed the coefficients to be chosen based on their effect on the overall clustering rather than, as had been done before, selecting the clustering strategy on an ad hoc basis. Williams and Lance also introduced the

Canberra distance The Canberra distance is a numerical measure of the distance between pairs of points in a vector space, introduced in 1966 and refined in 1967 by Godfrey N. Lance and William T. Williams. It is a weighted version of ''L''₁ (Manhattan) distance. ...

, a form of Manhattan distance between pairs of points normalised by dividing by the total Manhattan distance of the points from the origin. The normalisation makes this distance measure particularly suited for data sets in which some data values may significantly differ from the rest. Recognizing the general applicability of these methods, Williams went on at CSIRO to apply them to problems other than plant taxonomy, as well as to the classification of

angiosperm Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

s and grasses. In this work, he viewed numerical taxonomy as a form of exploratory data analysis, intended more to generate new hypotheses than to confirm them.

Other activities

Williams was an avid composer of mathematical puzzles; for instance, he wrote the

cross-figure A cross-figure (also variously called cross number puzzle or figure logic) is a puzzle similar to a crossword in structure, but with entries that consist of numbers rather than words, where individual digits are entered in the blank cells. The numb ...

puzzle "The Little Pigley Farm" (also known as Dog's Mead, Little Pigley, Little Piggly Farm, Little Pigsby, Pilgrims' Plot, or Dog Days) which he first published in 1935 in '' The Strand Magazine''.. Long a self-taught piano player, Williams took lessons after moving to Australia, earned a credential, and taught piano himself. He also organised the first North Queensland Piano Competition.

Awards and honours

In 1973, the

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

awarded Williams an honorary doctorate. He was elected as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1978, and in 1980 he became an officer of the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, W. T. English botanists 20th-century Australian botanists English statisticians Australian statisticians Alumni of Imperial College London Academics of the University of Southampton Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science 1913 births 1995 deaths British Army personnel of World War II Royal Artillery soldiers Royal Army Ordnance Corps soldiers Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers officers British emigrants to Australia Military personnel from London