List of Famous people named William

William Aubrey was Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford from 1553 to 1559, and was one of the founding Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford. He was also a Member of Parliament for various Welsh and English constituencies between 1554 and 1592.

William Arden, 2nd Baron Alvanley was a British Army officer, peer and socialite, who was a friend of Beau Brummell and one of a close circle of young men surrounding the Prince Regent.

Lieutenant-Colonel William Anstruther-Gray, FSA, JP, DL was a Scottish soldier and politician.

William Collier Jr. was an American stage performer, producer, and a film actor who in the silent and sound eras was cast in no less than 89 motion pictures.

General Sir William Dillon Otter was a professional Canadian soldier who became the first Canadian-born Chief of the General Staff, the head of the Canadian Militia.

William Ross, 8th Lord Ross of Halkhead was a Scottish nobleman.

William Henry Barlow FRS FRSE FICE MIMechE was an English civil engineer of the 19th century, particularly associated with railway engineering projects. Barlow was involved in many engineering enterprises. He was engineer for the Midland Railway on its London extension and designed the company's London terminus at St Pancras.

Admiral of the Fleet William Henry Dudley Boyle, 12th Earl of Cork, 12th Earl of Orrery, was a British Royal Navy officer and peer. He served as a junior officer on the China Station during the Boxer Rebellion and went on to serve in the First World War initially as a staff officer during the Dardanelles Campaign and as then commander of the Red Sea Patrol: in that capacity he led a six-day bombardment of the Turkish held port of Jeddah and worked closely with T. E. Lawrence in support of the Arab Revolt. In the inter-war years he was Commander-in-Chief, Reserve Fleet, President of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich and Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet. After succeeding a cousin and becoming Earl of Cork in 1934, he became Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth.

William "Vilim" Feller, born Vilibald Srećko Feller, was a Croatian-American mathematician specializing in probability theory.

William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme was an English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician. Having been educated at a small private school until the age of nine, then at church schools until he was fifteen; a somewhat privileged education for that time, he started work at his father's wholesale grocery business in Bolton. Following an apprenticeship and a series of appointments in the family business, which he successfully expanded, he began manufacturing Sunlight Soap, building a substantial business empire with many well-known brands such as Lux and Lifebuoy. In 1886, together with his brother, James, he established Lever Brothers, which was one of the first companies to manufacture soap from vegetable oils, and which is now part of the British multinational Unilever. In politics, Lever briefly sat as a Liberal MP for Wirral and later, as Lord Leverhulme, in the House of Lords as a Peer. He was an advocate for expansion of the British Empire, particularly in Africa and Asia, which supplied palm oil, a key ingredient in Lever's product line. His firm had become associated with forced labour and atrocities in the Belgian Congo by 1911.