Roberta Gay Williams BS, MD

Doctor Williams developed an early interest in congenital heart disease and elected Medicine-Pediatrics primary training, followed by a combined pediatric and adult cardiology fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Her interests and expertise would span the lifecycle of patients with congenital heart disease. She was a pioneer in the field of echocardiography, beginning in 1973, developing the initial clinical correlations with echo findings that formed the bases of definitive non-invasive diagnosis of a wide variety of cardiac anomalies, supplanting cardiac catheterization for purely diagnostic purposes. While on the faculty at Children’s Hospital, she also served as the founding medical director of the cardiac surgical intensive care unit during the era when infant surgery was being developed.