Wayne Dewey Criddle was on born May 7, 1914 in Syracuse, Utah. Criddle received his BS in Civil Engineering from Utah State University and a MS in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin. He married Erma Ellen Sheffield on June 16, 1934.

Criddle worked as a professor of engineering at Utah State University for 20 years, served as the Utah State Engineer from 1957 to 1965, was the president of the Clyde-Criddle Woodward, Inc., Consulting Engineers of Salt Lake City, as well as a consulting engineer for Harza Engineering Company International. During the course of his career Criddle was responsible for establishing water requirements on irrigated lands in the lower Colorado River Basin, which were subsequently adopted by the US Supreme Court in Arizona vs. California. Criddle was employed by the USDA and the US Bureau of Indian Affairs to work on irrigation, water conservation, and related projects throughout the Western United States and in many countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and Central and South America. He served as Chairman of the United States Committee of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) and as a Vice President of the ICID during 1970 and 1973.

Criddle was the author and co-author of hundreds of publications, including Conservation Irrigation (1950), Methods for Evaluating Irrigation Systems (1956), Irrigation Training Guide (1957), Utah's Future Water Problems (1958), and was the co-founder of the Blaney-Criddle Method, a scientific approach to gage computed water requirements. He died on November 29, 1996 in Salt Lake City.