The Wellcome Trust used to be a small, little-known charity providing limited support for medical research about £1m a year in 1959. It was entirely dependent on the profits of one pharmaceutical company for its income. Peter Williams, who has died aged 88, joined the trust that year as an administrator. By the time he retired as its director in 1991, the trust had started to diversify its assets and had disbursed more than £400m. It was then well on its way to becoming an internationally renowned charity, and now each year provides more than £700m to support research into animal and human health around the world.
The 1936 will of Sir Henry Wellcome left his pharmaceutical company, the Wellcome Foundation, to five trustees who were required to spend their income on research relating to medicine, particularly on subjects in which Wellcome had a personal interest, including tropical medicine, pharmacy and pharmacology, and the history of medicine. Williams had the vision to see how the Wellcome Trust could support more research, not only in the areas suggested by Wellcome, but also in new and cutting-edge directions, and he had the energy and drive to foster new funding schemes.
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