Williams began his academic research career by joining the faculty at the
University of Oregon in 1920. During the following twelve years he spent there, he discovered
pantothenic acid. In 1932 he moved to
Oregon State College and in 1939 he moved again to the
University of Texas at Austin. He founded and became the founding director of the Biochemical Institute (later the Clayton Foundation Biochemical Institute) in 1940 with funding from Benjamin Clayton. Williams' research program was notable in that he used
yeast as
model organisms to study nutritional requirements, on the hypothesis that the underlying cellular biochemistry was generalizable from yeast to animals. He aimed to study
vitamins, at the time known as animal nutrients whose chemical properties were not characterized. This approach was successful in leading to the discovery of
pantothenic acid, published in 1933, which prompted renewed interest among biochemists in microbial metabolism. Williams and his colleagues in Texas – including
Robert Eakin,
Beverly Guirard,
Esmond Snell, William Shive, and
Lester Reed – continued this work and used the technique to discover a number of other vitamins and nutrients. Williams and Snell, along with student
Herschel K. Mitchell, isolated and named
folic acid by extracting it from four tons of processed
spinach. He also worked on discovering and isolating
vitamin B6,
lipoic acid, and
avidin. Throughout his career Williams was a prolific writer, producing not only hundreds of scientific papers but also a number of widely used textbooks. Williams retired from his role at the director of the Biochemical Institute in 1963 and from the University of Texas in 1986. ==Nutrition educator==