He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1936[13] for research carried out as a postgraduate student of Magdalen College, Oxford.
[14] Working at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE), Williams was a substantial contributor during World War II to the development of radar.
Williams was the chief authority and the main source of ideas on the electrical circuits associated with many radar devices evolved at the Telecommunications Radio Establishment.
Since the war he has developed successfully an electric storage tube for the proposed Manchester digital computing machine.
The storage depends for its success on most delicate properties of wave form produced by electronic bombardment of a spot on a screen.