Bill received his B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Notre Dame in 1958 and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Pittsburgh in 1963. After post-doctoral work in London at the Institute of Psychiatry and in Bethesda at the NIH he came to Seattle in 1967 with joint faculty appointments in Physiology and Biophysics and Medicine (Neurology) and the VA Medical Center, advancing to full professor in 1977. His work centered on mechanisms of ion transport in the nervous system. In 2003 he became Professor Emeritus at the UW and Executive Director of the Histochemical Society. He mow works on administration for the Society and develops and teaches laboratory-based immunohistochemistry and microscopy courses which are offered at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.