William Martin (Ph.D, Harvard, 1969), is the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Professor Emeritus of Religion and Public Policy in the Department of Sociology at Rice, which he joined in 1968. Since his retirement from teaching in June 2007, he serves as the Chavanne Senior Fellow for Religion and Public Policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice, where he directs two programs, Religion and Public Policy and Drug Policy.

After several years of experience as a boy preacher, Bill Martin attended Abilene (Texas) Christian University, where he received B.A. (1958) and M.A. (1960) degrees in Biblical Studies and taught for one year as a graduate assistant. He then attended Harvard Divinity School, where he received the B.D. degree in 1963. In 1969, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard, in a program known as Religion and Society, a joint effort between the Divinity School and the Department of Social Relations.

At the suggestion of his adviser Harvey Cox, he submitted an article based on his doctoral thesis to The Atlantic Monthly, which published it as the lead article in its December 1967 issue. Flushed with the pleasure of having his work read by large numbers, Bill Martin began to follow an unusual career path of publishing mainly in high-quality magazines such as The Atlantic, Harper's, Esquire, and Texas Monthly, for which he wrote a three-year monthly series of articles on Texas churches that led to his being the subject of a "60 Minutes" segment in September 1979.

His writings on various aspects of evangelical and fundamentalist religion led to his being given the opportunity write A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (William Morrow, 1991), regarded as the most authoritative biography of the famed evangelist. An updated version of this book, with four new chapters, was released by Zondervan in February 2018.

He is also the author of With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (Broadway Books, 1996), the companion volume to the PBS mini-series of the same name.

Bill Martin received a number of teaching awards during his years as a professor, including a Life Honor Award that made him ineligible for most additional awards given by Rice. At age sixteen, he decided to become a college professor as a consequence of exposure to particularly inspiring and dedicated teachers he encountered during his freshman year in college. Now in his fiftieth year at Rice, with a half-time appointment at the Baker Institute, he still regards it as a fine decision.