Ganga Ram was born at Mangtanwala in what is now Nankana Sahib district in 1851, trained as an engineer at Thomason College Roorkee, and spent his career in the Punjab Public Works Department.
He designed and built a large part of institutional Lahore: the Government College chemistry department, the Albert Victor wing of Mayo Hospital, the Lady Maynard Industrial School, the Hailey College, the Ganga Ram Hospital and much else.
He then took a lease on around twenty-five thousand hectares of barren land at Renala Khurd, lifted water onto it with a hydroelectric plant he built himself on a canal fall, and turned it into a working farm. It was the first hydroelectric installation in Punjab and it is still there.
He gave away most of his fortune. The Ganga Ram Hospital at Lahore, the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital at Delhi founded by his sons in 1954, the Ganga Ram Trust and a number of schools and homes for widows came from it.
He died in London in 1927 and part of his ashes was brought back to Lahore.
An engineer from a village in what is now Pakistan built the public buildings of Lahore, irrigated a desert with his own power station, and endowed two of the largest hospitals in South Asia.
He was an engineer in the Punjab public works, designed and built a large part of Lahore's public architecture, and then took a barren tract at Renala and made it productive with a lift irrigation scheme he built himself.
He gave the profits away. The hospitals, schools, orphanages and widows' homes he endowed in Lahore and Amritsar carry his name and several are still running.
He is one of the very few figures of that period honoured by institutions in both countries. Lahore's largest hospital and Amritsar's are both his.