William George Nicholson Geddes

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William George Nicholson Geddes, CBE DSc FRSE FEng (July 29, 1913 - November 10, 1993) was a Scottish civil engineer.

George Geddes was born in Oldhamstock, East Lothian and studied civil engineering at Edinburgh University, gaining a "blue" in football. He worked for the City Engineer in Edinburgh, then Sir William Arrol & Company, and F A Macdonald & partners under W A Fairhurst, before joining Babtie Shaw and Morton in 1942. He became a partner of the firm in 1950 and senior partner from 1976 to 1978. His specialist experience was structural engineering which led to an interest in hydro-electric projects, dams, shipyards, docks and industrial developments. One of his most notable projects, under the overall direction of James Arthur Banks, was his contribution to the Allt-na-Lairige dam in Argyllshire in the 1950s, this being the first concrete dam in Western Europe, and possibly the world, to be prestressed with high tensile steel bars. Later he was in charge of Backwater Dam, the first in the UK to use a chemical grout cut-off. One of his outstanding achievements was the major shipbuilding dock at the head of the Musgrove Channel in Belfast for Harland and Wolff. The dock was the largest in the world when it was completed in 1970, having been designed and constructed scarcely two years after the decision was taken to proceed.

As well as being active in Scottish branches of professional institutions, he was elected President of all three of the Institutions in which he took a keen interest: Institution of Structural Engineers in 1971-72, Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders 1977-79, and he was president of the Institution of Civil Engineers between November 1979 and November 1980.^[1] In 1975, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,^[2] and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1978. In 1980 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Edinburgh.^[3]

He was an accomplished footballer and played for Queen's Park F.C., later becoming their President and eventually Patron of the Club, the oldest in Scotland.