FRSE
Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...
Scottish
Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
*Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland
*Scottish English
*Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...
civil engineer
A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...
.
Life
George Geddes was born in
Oldhamstocks
Oldhamstocks or Aldhamstocks ("old dwelling place") is a civil parish and small village in the east of East Lothian, Scotland, adjacent to the Scottish Borders and overlooking the North Sea . It is located south-east of Dunbar and has a populat ...
,
East Lothian
East Lothian (; sco, East Lowden; gd, Lodainn an Ear) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, as well as a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area. The county was called Haddingtonshire until 1921.
In 1975, the histo ...
the son of Ina Nicholson and her husband, William Brydon Geddes. His early education was at Dunbar Grammar School.
He studied civil engineering at the University of Edinburgh, graduating with a BSc in 1934 and gaining a "blue" in football. He worked for the City Engineer in Edinburgh, then Sir William Arrol & Company, and F.A. Macdonald & Partners under William Fairhurst, before joining
Babtie, Shaw and Morton
Babtie, Shaw and Morton was a firm of civil engineers based in Glasgow, Scotland, and noted for its work on bridges, dams and reservoirs.
History
It took its name following the 1906 merger of Babtie & Bonn (a partnership founded by John Babtie ...
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 Geddes' most notable projects, under the overall direction of
James Arthur Banks
James Arthur Banks (1897 – 1 December 1967) was a Scottish civil engineer.Marples Ridgway, was his contribution to the design of the Allt na Lairige dam in
Argyllshire
Argyll (; archaically Argyle, in modern Gaelic, ), sometimes called Argyllshire, is a historic county and registration county of western Scotland.
Argyll is of ancient origin, and corresponds to most of the part of the ancient kingdom of ...
in the 1950s. This was the first concrete dam in western Europe, and possibly the world, to be prestressed by using high tensile steel bars, bolted either end, to compress the structure.
Later Geddes 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 Musgrave 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 built scarcely two years after the decision was taken to proceed.
In 1975, he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...
. His proposers were Hugh Sutherland,
William Thomas Marshall
Lieutenant-Colonel William Thomas Marshall VC (5 December 1854 – 11 September 1920) was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to Briti ...
,
Ian Sneddon
Prof Ian Naismith Sneddon FRS FRSE FIMA OBE (8 December 1919 Glasgow, Scotland – 4 November 2000 Glasgow, Scotland) was a Scottish mathematician who worked on analysis and applied mathematics.
Life
Sneddon was born in Glasgow on 8 Dece ...
,
Anthony Cusens
Anthony or Antony is a masculine given name, derived from the '' Antonii'', a ''gens'' ( Roman family name) to which Mark Antony (''Marcus Antonius'') belonged. According to Plutarch, the Antonii gens were Heracleidae, being descendants of Anton ...
,
Robert Simpson Silver
Robert Simpson Silver CBE, MA, Ph.D, D.Sc., D.Tech, F.I.Mech.E, F.Inst.P, FRSE (1913–1997) was a Scottish physicist and mechanical engineer, awarded the Unesco Prize for Science in 1968 for his discovery of a process for the demineralis ...
and
Arnold Hendry
Arnold may refer to:
People
* Arnold (given name), a masculine given name
* Arnold (surname), a German and English surname
Places Australia
* Arnold, Victoria, a small town in the Australian state of Victoria
Canada
* Arnold, Nova Scotia
Un ...
Geddes was married to Margaret Gilchrist Wilson in 1941.
Football
Geddes was an accomplished footballer, playing for
Queen's Park F.C.
Queen's Park Football Club is a Scottish professional association football, football club based in Glasgow, which currently plays in the Scottish Championship, the second tier of the Scottish football pyramid. Queen's Park is the Oldest footba ...
in 1936, and serving from 1985 to 1988 as their President and eventually becoming a patron of the club, the oldest club in Scotland.