George Shaw

George Wenham Shaw (usually published as "G.W. Shaw"; 28 April 1928 in Stalybridge, Cheshire – 27 November 2006 in Grantchester) was a biologist and leading British expert on academic dress. He designed the academic robes for the University of Bath UK, Trent University, Ontario and Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela.

Shaw was also a patron of the Burgon Society, who are responsible for publishing a third, posthumous, edition of Shaw's Academical Dress. and received a positive review in The Guardian from Peter Preston, as well as a four-page vitriolic diatribe in The Oxford Magazine from his colleague and occasional collaborator Charles Franklyn. including details of all of the universities founded since the original publication, including those former polytechnics which had been accorded university status.

In 1969 he was appointed a Fellow of the Institute of Biology, which adopted his suggested fellowship hood in 1979. In 1970, the University of Hong Kong invited him to submit a portfolio of his published research for consideration, and awarded him the degree of DSc. Towards the end of his teaching career, in 1980, he was awarded a Schoolmaster's Fellowship to Girton College, Cambridge, which subsequently appointed him a Fellow Commoner. When the Burgon Society was founded in 2000, he became an active founding member and one of its first fellows honoris causa, and in 2005 became one of the Society's patrons. He died of heart failure in November 2006.