George Robie Russell was born January 20, 1921, near White Bird, Idaho to Ralph James and Sarah Alice (Robie) Russell. He was a descendant of the Robie family, Idaho pioneers who came to the gold rush at the Boise Basin and Florence in the mid-1800s and then moved north to the Salmon River country of north central Idaho. He attended school at White Bird and graduated from White Bird High School in 1937.

Encouraged by his family to pursue an engineering education, George attended the University of Idaho in Moscow, later graduating with a bachelor's in Civil Engineering in 1943. Upon graduation, George went to work for the Civil Aeronautics Administration in Alaska and later joined the U.S. Navy. He served in the Aleutian Islands as an ensign in the Civil Engineer Corps. It was his job to survey and lay out military airstrips for use by U.S. forces.

In 1947, he returned to Moscow and the university to teach surveying and field engineering to students who had just returned from the war. In the same year, he married Jean Ray Atkinson, though their marriage ended a few years later. In 1951, he returned to Alaska to work as an engineer with the Alaska Road Commission. Here he met Lois Christine Smith, of Hot Springs, Arkansas and they were married on October 27, 1952.

In the spring of 1958, George and Lois moved back to Moscow so George could begin a professorship at the University of Idaho's College of Engineering. He taught surveying, transportation engineering, strength of materials, engineering economy, engineering law and contracts, as well as statics. He also served as Assistant Dean of the college and was eventually made Associate Dean in 1980. He retired from the university in 1985. George R. Russell died on January 27, 2010 in Billings, Montana at 89 years old.