George Warren Fuller, born in Franklin, Massachusetts on December 21, 1868, was a sanitary engineer. He was accepted to MIT at the age of sixteen and, after deferring for a year due to his father’s death, completed his degree in chemistry in 1890. After graduation, Fuller traveled to Berlin, Germany to study bacteriology. He married Lucy Hunter in 1888 and the pair had one son, Myron Fuller, in 1889. Lucy died of enteritis soon after. He then married Caroline L. Goodloe in Louisville, Kentucky in 1899 and the pair had two children, Kemp Goodloe Fuller in 1901 and Asa W. Fuller in 1903. Caroline died in 1907.

 

Fuller is responsible for some of the most influential inventions related to water and waste treatment and is therefore considered one of the greatest sanitary engineers of his time. He devised the first modern water filtration plant, engineered the first chlorination system to disinfect drinking water in the United States, and conducted revolutionary work on sewage treatment facilities across the country. Fuller served as President of the American Water Works Association as well as the American Health Association. He won the Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1903 and was admitted to the Water Industry Hall of Fame by the American Water Works Association in 1971.

 

George Fuller died in New York City on June 15, 1934 and is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in West Medway, Massachusetts.