George S. Morison

George Shattuck Morison (December 19, 1842 – July 1, 1903) was an American engineer. A classics major at Harvard who trained to be a lawyer, he instead instead became a civil engineer and leading bridge designer in North America during the late 19th century. During his lifetime, bridge design evolved from using 'empirical “rules of thumb” to the use of mathematical analysis techniques'. Some of Morison's projects included several large Missouri River bridges as well as the great cantilever railroad bridge at Memphis, Tennessee, and the Boone, Iowa viaduct. Morison served as president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (1895) as well as a member of the British Institute of Civil Engineers winning that institution's Telford Medal in 1892 for his work on the Memphis bridge. In 1899, he was appointed to the Isthmian Canal Commission and recommended it be built at Panama.