William L. Garrison is Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Emeritus Research Engineer in the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Berkeley, His professional concerns and current work focus in the main on technological change in large systems, especially transportation systems.

Born in 1924, Garrison served as a meteorologist during WWII. He received his bachelors and masters degrees from Peabody college in Nashville, Tennessee, and in 1950 he received the Ph.D. in geography from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In addition to working in geography and civil engineering, he has been a truck driver, surveyor, and mechanic. He is seven times a father and fourteen times a grandfather.

Somewhat of a job hopper, Garrison has held positions at the University of Washington, Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois, and University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of California. During the 1950s he was a Lecturer in the Brookings Institution's Urban Policy Program. Garrison's "Lessons From the Design of a Life" describes these adventures.

In the 1950s and 60s Garrison served on the Research Advisory Committee and the Advisory Committee on the Highway Cost Allocation Study of the Bureau of Public Roads. Later he served on the National Research Council Research Advisory Committee to the U.S. DOT; Independent Study Board of the U.S. DOC; Advisory Committee on Small Area Data of the Bureau of the Census; Committee on Research of the Economic Development Agency, U.S. DOC; Committee on Economics of the National Science Foundation; Study Committee on the Social Sciences of the National Science Board; and the Commission on Sociotechnical Systems of the National Research Council. He has also served as consultant to government, non-profit, and business organizations; the National Transportation Policy Study Commission; and as Chairman of the Transportation Research Board. He has served on the editorial boards of several journals. These and similar activities seem, in his words, "not to have done harm and may have been useful."