William W. Hay was born in Bay City, Michigan, and completed a Bachelor of Science degree in management engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in 1931.
He rose to the rank of Lieutenant colonel with the United States Army Military Railway Service in both the European and Pacific theaters during World War II.
[1] After working briefly for the Reading Railroad after the war, he joined the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty in 1947 and completed a Master of Science in Civil engineering in 1948.
He was the Professor of Railway Civil Engineering from completion of his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1956 until he retired in 1977.
[1] Following Dr. Hay's death in 1998, the AREMA board of directors and committee on engineering economics established the annual William W. Hay Award to recognize these outstanding achievements in Railway Engineering:[2]