Harvard School of Engineering & Applied Sciences

Alan Gordon Gutteridge

Alan Gordon Gutteridge (1892–1942) was born in Launceston, Tasmania. He attended Melbourne Grammar School and studied engineering at the University of Melbourne. He was on holiday in the United States at the outbreak of the First World War, enlisted in the Canadian army, fought at Ypres and the Somme, was wounded and taken captive. After the war, he completed his studies at the University of Melbourne and received a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (1921). He returned to the United States on a Rockefeller Fellowship (in the same cohort that took Duncan Glenerochie Robertson to the Harvard School of Public Health). He received an S.M. in sanitary engineering from the Harvard Engineering School in 1923. He was made Director of the Division of Sanitary Engineering in the Commonwealth Department of Health and was chairman of a Royal Commission on Sanitation appointed by the Victorian Government (1926). In 1928, he entered private practice as a consulting engineer specializing in water and sewage systems. He was a founder of Gutteridge Haskins & Davey in 1939 (now known as the GHD group).

Eric Arthur Watson

Eric Arthur Watson (1902– ) was born in Brisbane and attended Brisbane Grammar. He was an undergraduate in the Harvard Engineering School 1921–1923 but did not complete a degree. On his return to Australia he worked for the Ford Motor Company in Queensland. In 1928, he was transferred by Ford to their Bombay office. During the 1930s, he was employed by Ford in Madras. By 1948 he worked for Amalgamations Limited, Madras. The Harvard Alumni Directories for 1955 and 1960 give addresses in South Africa, after which he is listed as address unknown.

George Cassius Tallis

George Cassius Tallis (1902–1990) was the son of Australian theater entrepeneur, Sir George Tallis. His middle name echoes that of his father’s mentor James Cassius Williamson, the American-born actor and theatrical manager. He was an undergraduate student at the Harvard Engineering School (1921–1925) receiving an S.B. in Mechanical Engineering and marrying a Radcliffe student Dorothy Elizabeth France. He became a grazier on the Mornington Peninsula. For the 25^th Anniversary Report of the Harvard class of 1925 he wrote:

“On the whole, life has been for me pleasant, uneventful, and unspectacular. Looking back I don’t think I could have wished it otherwise, for opportunity, though it knocked several times, has always been courteously but firmly redirected up the road. My accomplishments, aside from shooting sitting rabbits with a fair degree of confidence, are quite nil and I may perhaps claim the rare distinction of never having said, written, or done anything worthy of note in any field of endeavor. It is a damaging confession and I fear will bring gasps of dismay from my more energetic, and erudite classmates. The Class standard has been let down, and badly at that!”

His marriage to Dorothy France lasted more than 60 years until her death in 1987. They are buried together in the France family plot in Columbus, Ohio.

Jack Mulholland

Jack Mulholland (1903– ) was born at Gympie, Queensland, and attended Gympie High School. In 1921, he won a scholarship to attend the University of Queensland from which he graduated as Bachelor of Engineering, with first-class honours in civil engineering, in 1926. He then received a Walter and Eliza Hall Engineering Fellowship that took him to the United States to study water supply and sewerage. He attended the Harvard Engineering School 1928–29 from which he graduated with a masters degree. This was followed by a Masters of Civil Engineering from the University of Queensland in 1933. He worked as a private consulting engineer on water and sewerage projects in Queensland and enlisted as an engineer during the Second World War.

Henry Joseph Nichol Hodgson

Henry Joseph Nichol Hodgson (1901–1992 ) was born at Allans Flat near Yackandandah, Victoria. He received a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the University of Melbourne in 1923 and was appointed to the staff of the South Australian Hydraulic Engineer in 1924. He was the South Australian Assistant Engineer for Sewers when he came to the Harvard Engineering School (1935–36) on a Commonwealth Fund fellowship. After Harvard, he continued to work for the South Australian government on water and sewage policy. In 1964, he was elected President of the Australian Water Association. The Association’s H. J. N. Hodgson medal is named in his honor.

Class of 1923
Alan Gordon Gutteridge, S.M.
Eric Arthur Watson

Class of 1925
George Cassius Tallis, S.B.

Class of 1929
Jack Mulholland, S.M.

Class of 1936
Henry Joseph Nichol Hodgson