Robert Williamson AO FAA (born 1938) is a retired British-Australian molecular biologist who specialised in the mapping, gene identification, and diagnosis of human genetic disorders.
[6] From his new position at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, Williamson's group went on to clone the human alpha-, beta- and gamma-globin genes from cDNAs, and used them to deduce their genomic structures.
By 1980, Williamson and colleagues began applying the discovery of DNA markers called restriction fragment length polymorphisms to perform linkage mapping to locate the position of important human disease genes.
[11] In 1991, John Hardy, a lecturer in Williamson's department, identified the first mutation associated with Alzheimer's disease in the gene encoding the amyloid precursor protein (APP).
[14] Williamson recruited and mentored many leading molecular geneticists during his two decades at St. Mary's Hospital, including Royal Society Fellows Dame Kay Davies, Stephen D. M. Brown, Gillian Bates and John Hardy.
He taught me how much more successful you could be as a scientist if you were collaborative and had an extensive network of basic and clinical scientists.”[15] Hardy acknowledged that the “first 13 grant applications I wrote were unsuccessful and without the continuing support of Bob, our efforts would have foundered.”[16] In 1995, Williamson moved from London to Melbourne, Australia, to become Director of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, taking over from David Danks,[17] a clinical geneticist who had trained with Victor A. McKusick.
[21] Williamson successfully broadened the orientation of the Murdoch Institute, growing it to some 600 staff by the time he retired in 2005, pursuing research on ethics, public health, and genetics of complex diseases.