| William Walter Hay | |
| Birth Date: | 10 December 1908 |
| Birth Place: | Bay City, Michigan, U.S. |
| Death Date: | 26 March 1998 (aged 89) |
| Death Place: | Champaign, Illinois, U.S. |
| Field: | railway engineering |
| Work Institutions: | Pennsylvania Railroad Long Island Rail Road Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad Military Railway Service (United States) Reading Railroad University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| Alma Mater: | Carnegie Mellon University University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
William Walter Hay (1908–1998) was an American civil engineer and professor remembered with the annual American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA) Hay Award recognizing outstanding achievements in railway engineering.
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. After working briefly for the Pennsylvania Railroad, he undertook advanced coursework in railway operations at Yale University before returning to the Pennsylvania Railroad and later the Long Island Rail Road and Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. 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. His Railroad Engineering textbook was published by John Wiley & Son in 1953. He was the Professor of Railway Civil Engineering from completion of his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1956 until he retired in 1977. He continued teaching as an emeritus professor until 1989.[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]