A family move prompted him to transfer to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received an undergraduate degree in 1933.
[1] He pursued graduate studies at several institutions, but settled on UNC, where he received his MA in 1934 and his PhD in physics in 1936 for a thesis on IR spectroscopy.
Francis Dudley Williams died on December 2, 2004, at Mesilla Valley Hospice in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
In 1964 he accepted a position as Regents Distinguished Professor of Physics at Kansas State University in Manhattan,[citation needed] where he remained until his retirement in 1982.
While at KSU, Williams continued his research in IR spectroscopy of gases, liquids, and solids, and investigated transmission and reflection spectra.