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Sir George Edward Gordon Catlin (1896-1979) was an English political scientist and philosopher. A strong proponent of Anglo-America cooperation, he worked for many years as a professor at Cornell University and other universities and colleges in the United States and Canada.

McMaster University Libraries Hamilton ON Canada holds his correspondence archive and the body of some of his works.

Sir Catlin's role in the history of American Political Science is the discursive axis of the paradigmatic disciplinary shift that took place in the first quarter of the 20th century. The arguments of Sir G.E.G. Catlin and W. Y. Elliott distinctly represent the transformation in both -- the theory of democracy and the image of science, and that for the next two generations set the terms of the debate about these issues, as well as, about the relationship between the mainstream discipline and the subfield of political theory. And, despite the theoretical and ideological differences between Catlin and Elliott, their exchange points to the intensely practical concerns, that originally informed the controversy about the scientific study of politics. Quoted from "Political Science on the Caps, Recovering Disciplin's Past" by Prof John G. Gunnell Rockefeller College PS University of Albany NY.

He was involved in the last months of WWI fighting on the Western Front.

He married English novelist Vera Brittain in 1925.

He was an unsuccessful Labour Party candidate in two general elections: 1931, in Brentford and Chiswick, and 1935 in Sunderland. From 1935 to 1937 he was on the executive committee of the Fabian Society. He drafted the constitution of the Paris Atlantic Institute, founded in 1961.^[1] He was also a member of the Pilgrims Club of Great Britain.^[1]

They had two offspring; son John Brittain-Catlin (1927-1987) author of autobiography (Family Quartet) published by Hemish Hamilton London 1987 and artist painter who died before his book's publication on 29 March 1987, sharing thus with his mother, Vera, their respective death anniversaries.

And their daughter the well-known British politician Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby.

George wanted to keep anonymity in his wife's WWI autobiography (Testament of Youth) and she reluctantly altered its last chapter, in which he appeared, to accommodate these wishes. He opposed the re-publication of the book by Virago Press in the late 1970s (several years after the author had died), but relented and allowed it to be done subsequently.

1. ^ ^{a b} (2007) Who Was Who. A&C Black. 

• Biography of George Catlin and description of the George Edward Gordon Catlin fonds, McMaster University Libraries

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