Sir William Roberts FRS (18 March 1830 – 16 April 1899) was a British physician in Manchester, England.

He was educated at Mill Hill School and at University College, London, graduating with a BA in 1851.

[1] Between 1870 and 1874, Roberts studied the dissolution of bacteria in cultures contaminated by a mold.

For this work, Roberts earned the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh.

When political pressure was brought against the British government's involvement in the Sino-Indian opium trade, the 1893–1895 Royal Commission on Opium was created to investigate the drug.