Louise Williams

Louise A. Williams Science Writer Louise Ann Williams, 57, a senior science writer at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute from 1991 to 2005, died Jan. 24 at her home in Arlington County. She had ovarian cancer. At the institute, Ms. Williams handled media relations, wrote award-winning public education materials and developed Web content for science news and national public education campaigns. Her work included the institute's "Keep the Beat," a cookbook on healthful eating. Ms. Williams had worked in media and publications in other parts of the National Institutes of Health beginning in 1987. Earlier, she was a writer-editor at Snyder Associates, a publication company in McLean, and an assistant program coordinator at the University of Washington's Institute on Aging. Ms. Williams was born in Washington and raised in Bethesda, where she was a 1968 graduate of Walt Whitman High School. At the University of Michigan, she received bachelor's and master's degrees in anthropology in the early 1970s and completed all but her dissertation for a doctorate in anthropology. From 1973 to 1976, she was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow and did anthropological field work on a Navajo reservation in Arizona and in the Lower Illinois River Valley and Oaxaca, Mexico. In 1982, she received a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. Her memberships included the National Association of Science Writers, the Writer's Center in Bethesda and Washington Independent Writers. Survivors include her mother, Nettie R. Williams of San Diego; and a brother.