Cicely D. Williams Papers

Cicely D. Williams (1893-1990) was a pediatrician and specialist in infant health and nutrition in developing countries. She described and documented kwashiorkor as a nutrition deficiency disorder and introduced the name kwashiorkor for the syndrome. She received her M.D. from Oxford in 1923. Later she received a diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 1929. Dr. Williams served as a House Physician at the South London Hospital for Women and Children from 1924-1926, and then as staff at the Queen's Hospital for Children from 1927-28. Dr. Williams joined the British Colonial Medical Service in 1929 and served until1948, including stints in Ghana from 1929-1936 and Malaysia from 1936-1948. She then became the first Head of Maternal and Child Health for the World Health Organization (Geneva) from 1948-1951. Then she was a Senior Lecturer in Nutrition at the University of London from 1953-1959. Later she was a Professor at the American University of Beruit from 1959-1964. She died in Oxford, UK on July 13, 1992.