Martin Hellman, who independently developed the key exchange at the same time, received credit for the discovery until Williamson's research was declassified by the British government in 1997.
[4] Williamson studied at Manchester Grammar School, winning first prize in the 1968 British Mathematical Olympiad.
From 1985 to 1989 Williamson worked at Nicolet Instruments in Madison, Wisconsin where he was the primary author on two digital hearing aid patents.
[9][10] After that, he moved to the IDA Center for Communications Research, La Jolla,[11] where he worked for the rest of his career.
His contributions to the invention of public-key cryptography, together with Clifford Cocks and James Ellis, have been recognized by the IEEE Milestone Award #104[12] in 2010 and by induction into the Cryptologic Hall of Honor in 2021.