How Did Georgia Tech's Most Famous Student Never Exist?

George P. Burdell has received several degrees, flown missions in several wars, hosted countless campus balls, and ordered countless pizzas -- but he's never technically existed. Learn about Georgia Tech's legendary student in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey Brainstuff,
Lauren bog Obam here. Student life at the Georgia Institute
of Technology in Atlanta, known familiarly as Georgia Tech, is
not for the delicate of heart or the weak of mind.
Tech as a serious school for serious students who take
classes like competatorics, Deformable Bodies, quantum information and quantum computing,

(00:25):
and multi variable calculus. That last one, according to the
school catalog, covers linear approximation and Taylor's theorems, lagrange, multiples
and constrained optimization, multiple integration, and vector analysis, including the
theorems of Green, Gauss and Stokes, which means a need
a class just to understand what that class is about.

(00:47):
But it's also in this place that the big hearted,
practical joker George P. Burdell lives and flourishes. At Georgia Tech,
where the nerd quotient is admittedly and proudly high and
the academic pressures absurdly fire. It's important to have an
alumnus like old George as a beacon. You see, George
has made it through Georgia Tech and then some. The

(01:08):
man is a practical legend. Around Georgia Tech. Check that
George P. Berdell is in fact a literal legend at
Georgia Tech, and that's where things get interesting. Let's take
a step back. For the past twenty five years, Maryland
Summers has been running the Living History program at Georgia Tech,
designed to collect, preserve, and present stories of the institution,

(01:30):
which opened its stores to students in Summers has supervised
for posterity more than one thousand, one hundred on camera
interviews with alumni and other people who have a connection
to the school. She said, I learned something new about
Georgia Tech with every single interview I do. I know
more about Georgia Tech than I do about myself and nobody.

(01:50):
But nobody knows more about George P. Berdell than Summers.
The naturally reclusive Burdell, Summers says, has several degrees from Tech.
According to his rest Amy, Summers has the diplomas to
prove it. Burdell's first, a Bachelor of Science in General Science,
was awarded in nineteen thirty. Since then, Burdell has never
strayed far from Tech. According to Summers, he was registered

(02:13):
for more than three thousand hours of classes in nineteen
sixty nine, and in nineteen seventy five was registered for
every class in the spring semester. He was named a
regent's professor in nineteen seventy one. Throughout the years, he's
been named host of countless balls and dances on campus.
He's evidently lettered in both football and basketball. There was
a time even recently when you couldn't find a petition

(02:35):
at Tech that didn't have George Peeberdell's name on it.
Outside of Tech, he was reportedly involved in several flight
missions in World War Two and in the Korean War,
Vietnam Operation Desert Storm, and in the conflicts in both
Iraq and Afghanistan. His name has appeared on the membership
roles of just about every church in synagogue in the
greater Atlanta metro area. He is such an outside legend

(02:57):
now at sometimes dead Series Tech that a story is
told to everyone who attends FACET, the orientation program for
first year's Exchange and Transfer students, and their families. He
has become at this point as much tradition as legend.
It's probably important to point out here that George P.
Berdell technically was never alive. He sprung into being, as

(03:19):
it were, through the whim of a real life student,
William Edgar ed Smith. In Smith had an extra application
for the school, known then as the George's School of Technology,
and proceeded to fill it out with the name of
his high school principal, a University of Georgia alum by
the name of George Phineas Butler. Smith wrote in the
newspaper The Atlanta Constitution on September eleven of ninety seven,

(03:43):
nothing could be more amusing than to register him as
a tech freshman. But I lost my nerve after writing
George P. And finished with Burdell. Burdell was the maiden
name of his best friend's mother and was also, it seems,
the name of the family cat. Smith's creation took all
the classes that Smith did, with Smith and his friends
who were in on the prank helping with homework and tests. Eventually,

(04:07):
Burdell earned his first degree when Smith graduated in nineteen thirty,
the same year that George P. Earned that initial degree.
Other students took up where Smith left off. George P.
Berdell became part of tech lore, and the legend lives
on Summers tells the story of a tech military alum
returning bone tired from duty overseas, who heard this welcome

(04:28):
at the airport once he got home. George P. Berdell,
Please contact the concierge. She has endless stories like that.
George P. Has been paged in airports and restaurants and
sporting venues all over the world. At Florida Citrus Bowl
in Orlando, as Tech was on its way to winning
a share of the nineteen ninety National Football Championship, George P.
Was being called over the public address system. Tech students

(04:51):
passed and present all know and share in his exploits.
When Time magazine conducted an online poll in two thousand
one first person of the Year, Burdell edged his way
toward the top of voting until someone at the magazine
got wind and shut down his candidacy. New York Mayor
rute Off Giuliani was instead honored that year. Back in
the nineteen fifties, a rumor circulated among Atlanta institutes of

(05:14):
higher education that Burdell was engaged and later married to
one Ramona Cartwright of nearby Agnes Scott College, and Summers
says the union never took place, not only because of
Burdell's oft engaged but never married reputation and other more
corporeal reasons. But because miss Cartwright never existed either, George's
name still finds its way onto wedding registers all the

(05:36):
time and whenever summers can get her way onto the
guestbooks at the funerals of Georgia Tech alums in this
pressure packed school, though the name Burdell is most synonymous
with good hearted, mostly harmless pranks, unless that is your
local business person who have largely grown wise to his tricks.
Back in the day, it was said Burdell had furniture

(05:57):
delivered to rival frats and to campus offices cash on delivery.
He has signed up for countless magazine subscriptions, online rebates, sweepstakes, entries, surveys,
you name it. He's on LinkedIn and Facebook. Twitter has
several accounts in his name. He has a great record
on rate by professors one review. You can't make up
how good this guy is. He's listed under the faculty

(06:18):
section in Tech School of Mechanical Engineering. President Barack Obama
gave him a shout out during a packed speech on
the Tech campus in two thousand and fifteen. Quote now
I understand George Peberdell was supposed to introduce me today,
but nobody could find him. He is omnipresent. Summers calls
him the spirit of Georgia Tech. The Living History Programs

(06:39):
Endowment Fund bears his name. A few years ago, Summers
sat down with George P. For the Programs One interview,
still reclusive, so much so that he requested his face
and voice be obscured in the video. Berdell, born in
a manner of speaking on April Fool's Day of eight,
described his childhood in Augusta, Georgia, his days at Tech,
and the world of tech today. These days, more than

(07:03):
fifteen thousand undergraduates are enrolled at Georgia Tech. It ranks
among the nation's top eight public schools, among the top
feign innovation and the top foreign engineering. It's graduated a
president Jimmy Carter, numerous athletic icons, including golfer Bobby Jones,
several astronauts, a ton of business titans, a Southern bred
comedian Jeff Foxworthy, and kind of one George P. Burdell,

(07:24):
who stands today as it's most famous alum. Though to
be sure, fame can be a little bit problematic, Summer said,
if your name is Burdell, you can't order a pizza
within fifty miles of Atlanta. Today's episode was written by
John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clay. Brain Stuff is

(07:45):
production of I Heart Radio's Has Stuff Works. For more
on this and lots of other legendary topics, visit our
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