Professor George Dick was a physician and virologist. In 1955, he was appointed to the Chair of Microbiology at Queen's University, Belfast. His work there was considerable, including research into poliomyelitis, whooping cough, smallpox, multiple sclerosis, measles, and panencephalitis, a postinfectious neurologic complication of measles. But it was especially for his work on poliomyelitis and smallpox that Dick became internationally as well as nationally renowned.
His principal legacy to Queen's University as an institution, and to Northern Ireland medicine and healthcare, was probably his leading role in the establishment of a Virus Reference Laboratory in the Department of Microbiology in 1957.