Willis Raymond Woolrich was born on March 1, 1889 in Mineral Point, WI. His parents were Hanna and George Woolrich. At 16 he was an assistant operating engineer, and at 17 he was running a power plant for metal mining. He graduated in 1906 from Mineral Point High School. In 1907 he enrolled at the  University of Wisconsin. From 1913 to 1916 he worked as an assistant methods engineer and the director of the education department of the Deering Division for the International Harvester Company. He met Neena Myhre and married her in 1914, they had six children together. Two years later he joined the University of Tennessee and helped make new methods of refrigeration. He got his advanced degree in 1923. After Willis Raymond graduated he started teaching at Depaul University for a year, then became an assistant methods engineer for Western Electric in Chicago. He left the University of Tennessee in 1933 and started working at the newly established Tennessee Valley Authority; he was the director of the Agriculture Industry Division. In 1936 Willis Raymond Woolrich became dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin Texas. In 1955 he established the engineering foundation. He established the Neena Myhre Woolrich Foundation for women engineers in 1973. He Published 125 books in all. He died in 1977 in Houston.

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