List of Famous people named William

William Paul (1822–1905) was an English horticulturalist and writer, known for his book The Rose Garden.

William Stephen Skylstad is an American Roman Catholic Bishop. He is Bishop Emeritus of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane in Washington retiring June 30, 2010. He is a former President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), having served after Archbishop Wilton Daniel Gregory of Atlanta, Georgia and before Cardinal Francis Eugene George, O.M.I., of Chicago, Illinois. Bishop Skylstad was appointed Apostolic Administrator of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baker, in Oregon, effective January 24, 2011, upon the appointment of Bishop Robert F. Vasa as Coadjutor Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa in California.

William Ross is an American composer, orchestrator, arranger, conductor and music director. Ross is the recipient of three Primetime Emmy Awards, one Daytime Emmy Award, and has been nominated for one Annie Award. He has been nominated twice for the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s).

William Duane was an American physicist. A coworker of Marie Curie, he developed a method for generating quantities of radon in the laboratory.

Sir William Crookes was a British chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry in London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube which was made in 1875. This was a foundational discovery that eventually changed the whole of chemistry and physics.

Lieutenant-Colonel William Lambton, FRS was a British soldier, surveyor, and geographer who began a triangulation survey in 1800-1802 that was later called the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. His initial survey was to measure the length of a degree of an arc of the meridian so as to establish the shape of the earth and support a larger scale trigonometrical survey across the width of the peninsula of India between Madras and Mangalore. After triangulating across the peninsula, he continued surveys northwards for more than twenty years. He died during the course of the surveys in central India and is buried at Hinganghat in Wardha district of Maharashtra. He was succeeded by his assistant George Everest.

Dr. William Thornton was a British-American physician, inventor, painter and architect who designed the United States Capitol. He also served as the first Architect of the Capitol and first Superintendent of the United States Patent Office.

Sir William Lyons, known as "Mr. Jaguar", was with fellow motorcycle enthusiast William Walmsley, the co-founder in 1922 of the Swallow Sidecar Company, which became Jaguar Cars Limited after the Second World War.