William D. Willis

William D. Willis (July 19, 1934 – September 15, 2015) was a neuroscientist and a pioneer in researching pain pathways in the body. He investigated how pain travels through the body and is received in the brain.

Education

William attended Texas A&M University and received a bachelor of science in Zoology and a bachelor of arts in English in 1956. He attended University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and received a M.D. in 1960. He then received a Ph.D. in Physiology at Australian National University in 1963 under the tutelage of Sir John Eccles.

In 1970 Willis became Chief of the Comparative Neurobiology Division at the Marine Biomedical Institute. In 1978 he became the Director at the Marine Biomedical Institute and in 1986 the Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anatomy & Neurosciences. Together with his research team, he used certain diseases to study pain like chronic pancreatitis, finding that it had to do with the number of mast cells.

Publications Throughout Willis' life he published 311 journal articles, 103 books and symposium chapters, and contributed to 12 textbooks.