William Madison Furnish was born August 17, 1912, in Tipton, Iowa. He received his B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Iowa in 1934, 1935, and 1938. As a geologist, he worked for oil companies in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, as well as in Oklahoma, during the 1940s and early 1950s. Dr. Furnish was a research assistant at the University of Iowa from 1938 to 1940, before again joining the Geology Department staff as associate professor in September 1953.

Dr. Furnish's area of research at the UI was paleontology, and he was promoted to full professor in 1956. In 1938 he married Eula Berniece Beck, who was a library assistant at the University of Iowa Geology Library during 1959. The couple had five children. Dr. William Furnish retired from teaching at the University of Iowa in 1978, and died November 9, 2007.