Dr. George W. Burns
Dr. Burns, a tall, stately man has been described as affable to students, professors and administrators. He liked to connect with people, and was often found bantering with many of his students or anyone who shared his passion for discussion. George Burns welcomed students into his office to talk. He mentored students to help them with planning of classes, life, and any other crisis they were having. Gordon and Helen Crider Smith, who partially funded the SEM Lab, were in Dr. Burns' class. He made everything interesting; students loved him for his ability to enthrall them and pursue greater interests in class topics. He had published two very successful textbooks in plant science, The Science of Genetics: An Introduction to Heredity, fourth and fifth editions. Both texts were published for the international market and can be found on display in the SEM Lab.
Dr. Burns' interests were mainly in botany, genetics, and meteorology. In WWII he was one of the first to fly missions into hurricanes to study typhoons on nearby islands that resulted from these hurricanes. Meteorology continued to excite him however, and during his years at OWU he was the official weatherman for the department. Students would ask Dr. Burns what the weather was going to be like over spring break in the area they were traveling to. He also enjoyed studying paleoweather events and glacial geology. He was involved with The Ohio State University’s institute of polar science, where he served as a botanist for two American Geographical Society field parties that studied glaciers in southern Alaska. He as well as other society researchers studied the relation of climate changes to glacier behavior during this time.
Dr. Burns was very fussy about accuracy. He planned the whole day by exact time frames, which could not be off by even a minute, not even to start early. For example, Hermine Burns, his wife, called him one day and said she would pick him up from work. He asked what time and she said, “4:30- 4:35.” He then asked her, “Which one will it be, 4:30 or 4:35?” When Dr. Burns would travel at night from University of Minnesota to Cincinnati, he would sit behind the University of Minnesota student union until the clock struck midnight before he would start his trip.
 | A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Dr. Burns joined OWU faculty in 1946 and was named chair of Botany/Bacteriology Department in 1954. |
| He served as Professor, Dean, Vice President, and Acting President during his distinguished career at OWU. |
| He retired from Ohio Wesleyan in 1979. |
| The SEM Laboratory was named after Dr. George Burns by Gordon and Helen Crider Smith ('54/'56). |
| The Burns-Shirling Award was established by alumni and friends upon Dr. Burns’s retirement. It is given annually to the student who demonstrates outstanding achievement in Botany/Microbiology. |
