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Pediatr Radiol (2011) 41:267269 DOI 10.1007/s00247-010-1909-y
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
John C. P. Williams of Williams-Beuren syndrome
Howard M. Lenhoff & Rita L. Teele &
Patricia M. Clarkson & Walter E. Berdon
Received: 3 September 2010 /Revised: 26 October 2010 /Accepted: 26 October 2010 /Published online: 25 November 2010 # Springer-Verlag 2010
Abstract John C.P. Williams of New Zealand, whose name is associated with Williams-Beuren syndrome, spent his known professional career primarily in cardiovascular research. His disappearance in the mid-1970s and his later life remain a mystery.
Keywords Williams . Beuren . History of medicine
Introduction
The resurgence of research on Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS) has spurred interest in other contributions of Dr. John Cyprian Phipps Williams and in the man himself. Much of this curiosity comes from parents who have a child with Williams syndrome, especially since Kit Crawford, a parent of one of
the children described in Williams classic 1961 paper, reported in 1999 that Williams had not been seen since he boarded a train en route to take a position at the Mayo Clinic. Crawford reported that Dr. Williams never claimed his suitcase at a London luggage office, never appeared at the Mayo Clinic, and had not been seen since (http://www.wsf.org
Web End =www.wsf.org ).
A discussion of the evolution of Williams-Beuren syndrome precedes this paper [1]. Spurred on by Dr. WalterE. Berdons interest in presenting material on WBS for readers of Pediatric Radiology, we did not find it difficult to learn that Williams actually did take a job at the Mayo Clinic, and furthermore, it was in the laboratory of the renowned physiologist, Earl H. Wood (Fig. 1). Williams began working in Rochester in the fall of 1962 and he kept his connection with the clinic through 1968 (Appendix). One reason we succeeded in our search for Dr. Williams was his two unusual middle namesCyprian Phipps. Using current Internet and medical search engines, it would have been most difficult to obtain information about him had we searched for the relatively common name John Williams. Searching for J.C.P. Williams greatly simplified our work, and from some of these citations, and through contacts we had from colleagues in New Zealand, we...