Richard Tecwyn Williams FRS[1] (20 February 1909 – 29 December 1979) was a Welsh biochemist who founded the systematic study of xenobiotic metabolism with the publication of his book Detoxication mechanisms in 1947.
An opportunity arose for Williams to undertake research with Dr John Pryde at the Physiology Institute, Cardiff, where he worked on elucidating the structure of glucuronic acid.
He has worked on the metabolism of aliphatic alcohols, alicyclic hydrocarbons, benzenes and alkylbenzenes, sulphonamides, drugs of a wide variety, heterocycles, and organotin compounds.
His work is of immediate relevance to an understanding of drug metabolism and action and that of the biological effects of food additives, pesticides, and other compounds foreign to the body".
[13] While a research student at Cardiff, Tecwyn Williams met Josephine Teresa Sullivan, who had been apprenticed and indentured as a ladies and gentlemen’s tailor.
They married in 1937, and had five children: Peter Sullivan, Richard Stephen Steel, Josephine Mary Johnston, Helen Maria Tecwyn and Marian Clare Gerard.