Professor Sir David Williams QC, DL, LLB, LLM (Calif), Hon LLD, Hon DLitt.
Life Fellow and Honorary Fellow; formerly Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1989-96, President of Wolfson College, and Rouse Ball Professor of English Law.

Sir David Williams came to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as an Open Scholar in 1950, and read History and Law over four years. Subsequently he was called to the Bar and was a Commonwealth Fund (Harkness) Fellow at Berkeley and Harvard 1956-58. He then taught at the University of Nottingham for five years and at the University of Oxford (he is an honorary Fellow of Keble College) 1963-67. In 1967 he returned to Emmanuel College as a Fellow in Law, he became Reader in Public Law in 1976, in 1980 he became President of Wolfson College (a post which he held until 1992), he was Rouse Ball Professor of English Law 1983-92, and from 1989 to 1996 he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 1996 he returned as a Fellow of Emmanuel College where he had been Senior Tutor and Tutor for Admissions 1970-76.

Sir David has served over the years on such bodies as the Council on Tribunals, the Royal Commission on the Environment, the Commission on Energy and the Environment, the Animal Procedures Committee (of which he was chairman), and more recently the Senior Salaries Review Body. In December 2001 he was appointed to a four-year term as President of the University of Wales, Swansea.

Sir David has been married to Sally since 1959 and they have three children, two lawyers and one involved in securities surveillance. He has published widely in the field of Public Law, and a festschrift in his honour was published in 2000. He loves books and has a personal collection of about 8,000 volumes.