William C. Roberts

In April, 1994, Roberts was appointed as editor of the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, a peer-reviewed and PubMed-indexed periodical of primarily regional interest in Northwest Texas. Roberts himself contributes a column to each issue entitled "Facts and Ideas from Anywhere", an homage to one of the guiding principles he ascribes to his colleague Eugene Braunwald.

In March 1993, 32 years after starting at the NIH, Roberts left the National Institutes of Health to join the faculty of Baylor University Medical Center, the flagship of a large hospital network located in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Working in a laboratory built for him by the hospital, he continues to study cardiac pathology and has published more than 300 articles since. He is also an active participant in the ongoing training of cardiovascular disease and pathology fellows.

Despite major achievements by the institution in the understanding of cardiovascular diseases, Roberts was frustrated by growing difficulties attracting pathologists interested in cardiovascular disease. These difficulties were compounded by the closure of the NIH cardiac surgery program in 1987, greatly limiting the quantity and diversity of pathology available for study.

Roberts was also editor of a series of books entitled Cardiology which were published in annual editions continuously from 1982-1999. Each of these books summarized the major achievements and discoveries in cardiology for their respective years.

Roberts was appointed to chair the publications committee of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) in 1976 by then-president Dean Mason, and continued to serve in this position for the next six years. In 1982, the publisher of the American Journal of Cardiology and the ACC, the organization which had founded it, parted ways. The ACC went on to form the Journal of the American College of Cardiology ("JACC") and took with it editor Simon Dack, leaving the AJC without an editor. Roberts was tapped to fill this position and readily accepted. He has held the editor-in-chief position continuously ever since.

Each year since 1973, Roberts has served as chief administrator and host of an annual course in cardiology held in Williamsburg, Virginia. Attendees are drawn from across the country and attend three days of sessions on varying current topics in cardiology, each led by a noted expert in the relevant field.

Roberts was actively involved in the leadership of the American College of Cardiology from 1971-1982 in the capacities listed below.

Roberts has been actively involved in a number of activities for the American Heart Association including serving as a reviewer for their annual scientific sessions. He has also been a fellow of the Council of Clinical Cardiology since 1971 and, since July 1994 has been a member of the Dallas AHA affiliate's board of trustees.

From July, 1964 to March, 1993, Roberts served as the first head of the newly created pathology section at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health. Here, he continued to work with notable cardiac physicians including Eugene Braunwald, Willis Hurst, and Glenn Morrow. Federal money for cardiovascular research, a national priority since the conclusion of World War II allowed for rapid expansion of the program. Roberts soon had 3 pathology fellows per year working with him, and he worked long hours alongside them - usually six nights per week.

In 1937, Stewart Roberts suffered a heart attack which disabled him until his death in 1941. Though this event would later come to cast great influence on Roberts' career, his initial undergraduate studies at Southern Methodist University were in English with aims toward a career in business. During this time, Roberts also joined the fraternity Phi Delta Theta. By junior year, Roberts' ambitions had shifted to medicine in earnest. In 1954, Roberts graduated early from Southern Methodist University with a bachelor's degree in the arts, having been accepted to Emory University's School of Medicine. To earn money, Roberts worked for the National Forest Service for the three months between college and medical school. Early in his medical school training, Roberts proved to be a gifted anatomist and earned a prestigious thoracic surgery externship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center before graduating Emory in 1958 with his medical doctorate.

William Clifford Roberts (born September 11, 1932) is an American physician specializing in cardiac pathology.

William C. Roberts was born in Atlanta, Georgia on September 11, 1932, the second of three sons to Stewart Ralph Roberts and Ruby Viola Holbrook. His father Stewart was a prominent faculty physician for Emory University Medical Center, attending patients alongside his mother who served as his nurse. The children were raised in the city until 1935 when the family moved to a rural farm 12 miles outside Atlanta where they would remain for the next six years. Roberts attended public schools in Avendale, Georgia, and then Atlanta, Georgia from the 5th grade onward. Roberts describes himself as a below-average student until 9th grade when an algebra teacher motivated him to pursue greater academic achievement.

Roberts has published over 1600 articles to date, almost all of them in peer-reviewed publications. The majority of his original scientific publications focus on anatomic aspects of cardiovascular disease. In addition, Roberts has written or co-authored a number of articles discussing risk factors and risk-factor management in cardiovascular disease. As editor for both the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings and The American Journal of Cardiology, Roberts has also published a number of editorials discussing current trends in cardiovascular medicine.