Willams was among the first to have performed cardiac surgery. Earlier surgeries on the pericardium were performed by Francisco Romero in 1801, Dominique Jean Larrey prior to 1842, and by Henry Dalton in 1891. He was the first surgeon to open the chest cavity successfully without the patient dying of infection. His procedures would therefore be used as standards for future internal surgeries. Also in 1891, he started the Provident Hospital and training school for nurses in Chicago, Illinois. This was established mostly for African - American citizens. In 1893 he repaired the torn pericardium of a knife wound patient, James Cornish, the second on record. He performed this surgery at Provident Hospital, Chicago, on 10 July 1893. About fifty-five days later, James Cornish had successfully recovered from the surgery.

In 1893, during the administration of President Grover Cleveland, Williams was appointed surgeon-in-chief of Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C.. In addition to organizing the hospital, Williams also established a training school for African - American nurses at the facility.

Williams was a teacher of Clinical Surgery at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and was an attending surgeon at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He worked hard to create more hospitals for African Americans. In 1895 he co-founded the National Medical Association for black doctors, and in 1913 he became a charter member and the only black in the American College of Surgeons.

Daniel Hale Williams was born and raised in the city of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. His father, Daniel Hale Williams, Jr. was the son of an African - American barber and a Scots - Irish woman. He lived with his father who was a "free negro" barber, his mother, a brother and five sisters. His family eventually moved to Annapolis, Maryland. Unfortunately, shortly after when Daniel was nine, his father died. Williams was married in 1898 to Alice Johnson, daughter of sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel and a maid of mixed ancestry. Williams died of a stroke in Idlewild, Michigan, on August 4, 1931. His wife, Alice Johnson, died in 1924.

Williams was honored, amongst others, for his achievements in the Stevie Wonder song "Black Man", from the album Songs in the Key of Life. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Daniel Hale Williams on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

He received honorary degrees from Howard and Willberforce Universtities, was named a charter member of the American College of surgeons and was a member of the Chicago Surgical Society.