List of Famous people named William

William Penn Adair (1830–1880) was a leader of the Cherokee Nation, an attorney who served in political office both before and after the American Civil War, and as a justice of their court. He entered the Confederate States Army on the promise that the Confederacy would support an Indian state if it won the war, and achieved the rank of colonel.

William Keith Brooks was an American zoologist, born in Cleveland, Ohio, March 25, 1848. Brooks studied embryological development in invertebrates and founded a marine biological laboratory where he and others studied heredity. His best known book, The Oyster, was first published in 1891 and has been reprinted many times.

William Gowland was an English mining engineer who carried out archaeological work at Stonehenge and in Japan. He has been called the "Father of Japanese Archaeology".

William Schlumberger was a European chess master. He is known to have taught Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant to play chess and as the operator of The Turk, a chess-playing machine which was purported to be an automaton. It was Bavarian musician and showman Johann Nepomuk Mälzel who hired him to operate The Turk. Schlumberger acted as the Turk's director in Europe and in the United States until his death from yellow fever in 1838.

William Blake Herron is an American film screenwriter, director and actor who contributed to the screenplay for The Bourne Identity. He also contributed to the screenplay for Eye of the Widow.

William Gilbert (1799–1877), established Gilbert company, the manufacturer of sports equipment, in 1823. Gilbert had a boot and shoemakers shop on 19 High Street next to Rugby School and started making balls for the school out of hand stitched, four-panel, leather casings and pig bladders. These balls were bigger and rounder than today's balls, which made them easier to kick longer distances.

William Worth Dickerson was a U.S. Representative from Kentucky.

William Burnet Tuthill was an American architect celebrated for designing New York City's Carnegie Hall.