Poet and physician, playwright, essayist, prose writer, one of the most important figures in 20th-century American poetry. Born in 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey. Graduated from the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania and practiced as a physician in his hometown for forty years. As a student, he was close to the Imagist circle, particularly to Ezra Pound, through whom his second collection of poems, The Tempers (1913), was published. During his lifetime, seventeen books of poetry were published, along with the four-volume poem Paterson and several works of prose. Williams's work had a significant influence on the Beat Generation of the 1950s and 1960s. He received the National Book Award (1950, its first year), the Pulitzer Prize (1963, posthumously), and several other honors. He died in 1963 in Rutherford.