Adrian Williams graduated from University College Hospital, London and, after training in General Medicine there, took up a lectureship at The Cardiothoracic Institute, Brompton Hospital, investigating the pulmonary changes associated with chronic liver disease. In 1975 he took tenure at Harvard Medical School where his interest in sleep began with the investigation of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (S.I.D.S). Here he published a definitive study implicating Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) as a cause of the syndrome. In 1977, took up a post as Chest Physician at U.C.L.A. where he further developed his interest in OSA and published one of the very first reports of OSA causing hypertension and of oximetry as a natural diagnostic tool.

In 1985 Dr Williams became tenured Professor of Medicine at U.C.L.A. and Co-Director of U.C.L.A’s Sleep Laboratory and was one of the first to become a Fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). In 1994, he returned to the UK taking up the directorship of the Sleep Disorders Centre at St Thomas’s Hospital. Here he developed one of the UK’s only comprehensive sleep services with continued interest in Sleep Disordered Breathing and its treatment.

Dr Williams is a Diplomat of the American Board of Sleep Medicine, a founding member of The British Sleep Foundation, the Sleep Medicine Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, and the R.L.S. UK Group. He has published extensively on Sleep Disorders including more than 100 peer reviewed original scientific papers and more than 40 other published papers including chapters and books.

In 2010, King’s College, London appointed him as the first substantive Professorial Chair in Sleep Medicine in the UK.

Sleep Medicine and Sleep Disorders