William S. Frederick Mayers (7 January 1831–1878) was a British diplomat, numismatist, writer, and sinologist.
In 1859 he joined the British Foreign Office and went to China as a student-interpreter, accompanying Lord Elgin to Beijing.
[3] In 1864 he was at Shanghai, assisting with Harry Smith Parkes the Bakufu officials Moriyama Takichirō and Yamaguchi Shichijirō.
In the same year he visited England, and in August read a paper on the Pathays of Yünan before the geographical section of the British Association at Brighton.
[5] In 1867, with Nicholas Belfield Dennys and Lieutenant Charles King, Mayers wrote The Treaty Ports of China, and in 1877 translated the Peking Gazette for that year.