[7][8] In 1656 he contributed to the programme of Hartlib and Robert Boyle for the reform of science, advocating the establishment of a College of Graduate Physicians.
[12] The W. R. writing a dedicatory poem to the Mataeotechnia medicinae praxeos (1651) of Noah Biggs has tentatively been identified as Rand.
[14] In 1657 he published a translation of Pierre Gassendi's life of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, as The Mirrour of True Nobility and Gentility, with John Evelyn as dedicatee.
[2][15] An English translation of the Encheiridium anatomicum et pathologicum (1648) by Johannes Riolanus, as A sure guide, or, The best and nearest way to physick and chyrurgery (1671), was by Nicholas Culpeper and W. R., who is identified as Rand.
[2] Rand expressed admiration also for Thomas Hobbes in a letter to Hartlib in 1651, finding in him a Protestant comparable in creative ideas to the Catholic Kenelm Digby.
[18] Rand also thought Hobbes a royalist,[19] but (against opinion in the universities) a potentially excellent adviser on education.