Professor J.S. Williams is one of Australia's leading applied physicists. He is internationally recognized for his outstanding contributions to research and development in materials science and engineering with particular applications to telecommunications. Williams pioneered the development of high resolution Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, a method which is now widely used internationally as a valuable tool for the near-surface analysis of materials. He is one of the world's foremost experts on ion implantation and has demonstrated the potential of that technique for microelectronic device processing including the annealing of GaAs and the doping of silicon. Professor Williams has made importance contributions to research and development in the microelectronics and telecommunications industry in a number of fields, including high resolution Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, amorphous metals, mechanisms ??f laser­solid interations, ion implantation and transient processing of GaAs, metastable doping of silicon, epitaxial crystallisation of silicon, channeling contrast microscopy, irradiation stitching and interface chemistry and phase transformations in silicon. He is the author of over 200 scientific papers. In addition to his own outstanding personal contributions to applied research, Professor Williams has proved to be an excellent manager and organizer of research groups. He has been particularly effective in arranging collaborative work between a number of Australian groups, working in the field of electronic materials engineering. His success in encouraging collaboration between groups from different institutions has been most important in optimizing the benefit to the nation from its investment in this expensive research field.