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Hector Macdonald
Times obituary
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Professor Hector Munro Macdonald, the eminent mathematical physicist, died yesterday at Aberdeen, where he had occupied the chair of mathematics since 1904. He had done a great deal to develop the theory of electric waves, especially in relation to wireless telegraphy, and it was largely owing to his work that theory kept pace with practice in this outstanding modern study. In addition, he made valuable contributions to the theory of Bessel functions, which are of so much importance in mathematical physics.
Hector Munro Macdonald was born in Ross-shire in 1865 and graduated at Aberdeen University. He then went up to Clare College, Cambridge, as a foundation scholar and had an unusually brilliant career. He was 4th Wrangler in 1889, when Frank Watson Dyson, later Astronomer Royal, was one of two bracketed immediately above him. The next year, in Part II of the Mathematical Tripos, he was placed in the first division of the first class. He was elected by his college to a Fellowship, which he held until 1908. The two most coveted mathematical distinctions at the University fell to him—a Smith's Prize in 1891 and the Adams Prize in 1901.
In that year, the high quality of Macdonald's investigations was recognized by his election to the Royal Society. His contributions to the mathematical theory of wireless telegraphy were mainly published in the society's "Proceedings" over a long period. Of particular importance was a series of papers on the diffraction of electric waves by a large spherical obstacle. This was particularly relevant to the transmission over the Earth's surface of the waves used in wireless telegraphy, a subject to which Macdonald later addressed himself specifically. Another important series of papers dealt with the behaviour of electric waves at the interface between two media. Some of his research was published in two books, "Electric Waves" (1902) and "Electromagnetism" (1934).
Macdonald received a number of scientific honours. He served on the Council of the Royal Society from 1908-10 and was awarded its Royal Medal in 1916. Clare College made him an honorary Fellow in 1914, while from Glasgow he received a Doctorate of Laws. He was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Association and became President of the London Mathematical Society.
The funeral will be tomorrow at 11:30 from King's College Chapel, Aberdeen, to Old Machar Churchyard.
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Professor John Laird, F.B.A., Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen, writes:
Professor H. M. Macdonald's career, and the directions in which he showed his scientific eminence, have been very adequately described in your columns of May 17, but the affectionate regard of those who worked with him in the north-east of Scotland depended even more on contact with his singular and very striking personality than on his attainments and renown. The simplicity of the man had a winning quality that can never be effaced from the memory of his friends so long as they live, and his humour, sympathy, and forbearance were as remarkable as his grasp of detail and his astonishing industry. He was fond of saying that all those whose mathematics he did not like (for example, Dedekind and Cantor) had minds that were complex without being subtle, and whatever the truth of these comments may have been, his own mind was certainly subtle and showed its subtlety by dominating the complexity of his interests and of his multifarious fields of activity
He delighted in university business and, having become a leader in the Senate of the University of Aberdeen within four years of his appointment to his professorship, remained a leader until he slipped off his harness in a week's short illness. He spoke little, and when he spoke he was always brief, but what he said was usually decisive and was always undeviatingly to the point. And what he did not say seemed devastating. Yet he could yield so skillfully that the concession itself would scarcely be noticed as such. He never rode half-principles to death. He had a fervent loyalty to tradition. And there were few among his colleagues whose minds he did not want to understand
He loved the soil and had a spiritual as well as an autochthonous kinship with the Dornoch Firth and the Highlands of Scotland. His rugged, powerful, massive, middle-sized figure and strong, sensitive face made him seem an exemplar of what the Highlands could produce, but his heart had warmed, for half a century or more, to the cold granite of Aberdeen, and he included a vast, strong humanity in his acquired nature. He did not believe that students should govern the university. Indeed, he thought he knew their place very precisely indeed, but he knew more of the circumstances as well as of the abilities of individual students than any half-dozen of his colleagues, and he was sagacious as well as beneficent in his application of this knowledge. But he knew the very stones of the university, too—particularly of the Chapel; and when he built, he built for perpetuity.
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A correspondent writes:
Professor Macdonald's war service was notable. With two other Scots W. E. Philip and I. C. Smith, he came to London in the early days of the Ministry of Munitions, and, with the latter, was quickly absorbed into one of the most exacting sections on the Labour side, that dealing with wages. For the remainder of the War he, like the other two, tailed unremittingly without special emoluments or the desire for secognition. The force of his personality and the uncommon quality of his ability were immediately felt, for he had the capacity to make himself rapidly an authority on any subject to which he gave his attention. His faultless memory was illustrated by his knowledge of the name of every winner of the Derby with the correct date since the first. It was a source of deliberate surprise to his friends to discover his expert knowledge of food and wines. He was Bursar of Clare College for some years, and in this capacity he set himself to learn everything there was to know about all the duties of his office. It is difficult to do justice to such a rich personality.
WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY
Professor Hector Munro Macdonald, the eminent mathematical physicist, died yesterday at Aberdeen, where he had occupied the chair of mathematics since 1904. He had done a great deal to develop the theory of electric waves, especially in relation to wireless telegraphy, and it was largely owing to his work that theory kept pace with practice in this outstanding modern study. In addition, he made valuable contributions to the theory of Bessel functions, which are of so much importance in mathematical physics.
Hector Munro Macdonald was born in Ross-shire in 1865 and graduated at Aberdeen University. He then went up to Clare College, Cambridge, as a foundation scholar and had an unusually brilliant career. He was 4th Wrangler in 1889, when Frank Watson Dyson, later Astronomer Royal, was one of two bracketed immediately above him. The next year, in Part II of the Mathematical Tripos, he was placed in the first division of the first class. He was elected by his college to a Fellowship, which he held until 1908. The two most coveted mathematical distinctions at the University fell to him—a Smith's Prize in 1891 and the Adams Prize in 1901.
In that year, the high quality of Macdonald's investigations was recognized by his election to the Royal Society. His contributions to the mathematical theory of wireless telegraphy were mainly published in the society's "Proceedings" over a long period. Of particular importance was a series of papers on the diffraction of electric waves by a large spherical obstacle. This was particularly relevant to the transmission over the Earth's surface of the waves used in wireless telegraphy, a subject to which Macdonald later addressed himself specifically. Another important series of papers dealt with the behaviour of electric waves at the interface between two media. Some of his research was published in two books, "Electric Waves" (1902) and "Electromagnetism" (1934).
Macdonald received a number of scientific honours. He served on the Council of the Royal Society from 1908-10 and was awarded its Royal Medal in 1916. Clare College made him an honorary Fellow in 1914, while from Glasgow he received a Doctorate of Laws. He was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Association and became President of the London Mathematical Society.
The funeral will be tomorrow at 11:30 from King's College Chapel, Aberdeen, to Old Machar Churchyard.
_________________________________________________________
Professor John Laird, F.B.A., Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen, writes:
Professor H. M. Macdonald's career, and the directions in which he showed his scientific eminence, have been very adequately described in your columns of May 17, but the affectionate regard of those who worked with him in the north-east of Scotland depended even more on contact with his singular and very striking personality than on his attainments and renown. The simplicity of the man had a winning quality that can never be effaced from the memory of his friends so long as they live, and his humour, sympathy, and forbearance were as remarkable as his grasp of detail and his astonishing industry. He was fond of saying that all those whose mathematics he did not like (for example, Dedekind and Cantor) had minds that were complex without being subtle, and whatever the truth of these comments may have been, his own mind was certainly subtle and showed its subtlety by dominating the complexity of his interests and of his multifarious fields of activity
He delighted in university business and, having become a leader in the Senate of the University of Aberdeen within four years of his appointment to his professorship, remained a leader until he slipped off his harness in a week's short illness. He spoke little, and when he spoke he was always brief, but what he said was usually decisive and was always undeviatingly to the point. And what he did not say seemed devastating. Yet he could yield so skillfully that the concession itself would scarcely be noticed as such. He never rode half-principles to death. He had a fervent loyalty to tradition. And there were few among his colleagues whose minds he did not want to understand
He loved the soil and had a spiritual as well as an autochthonous kinship with the Dornoch Firth and the Highlands of Scotland. His rugged, powerful, massive, middle-sized figure and strong, sensitive face made him seem an exemplar of what the Highlands could produce, but his heart had warmed, for half a century or more, to the cold granite of Aberdeen, and he included a vast, strong humanity in his acquired nature. He did not believe that students should govern the university. Indeed, he thought he knew their place very precisely indeed, but he knew more of the circumstances as well as of the abilities of individual students than any half-dozen of his colleagues, and he was sagacious as well as beneficent in his application of this knowledge. But he knew the very stones of the university, too—particularly of the Chapel; and when he built, he built for perpetuity.
__________________________________________________
A correspondent writes:
Professor Macdonald's war service was notable. With two other Scots W. E. Philip and I. C. Smith, he came to London in the early days of the Ministry of Munitions, and, with the latter, was quickly absorbed into one of the most exacting sections on the Labour side, that dealing with wages. For the remainder of the War he, like the other two, tailed unremittingly without special emoluments or the desire for secognition. The force of his personality and the uncommon quality of his ability were immediately felt, for he had the capacity to make himself rapidly an authority on any subject to which he gave his attention. His faultless memory was illustrated by his knowledge of the name of every winner of the Derby with the correct date since the first. It was a source of deliberate surprise to his friends to discover his expert knowledge of food and wines. He was Bursar of Clare College for some years, and in this capacity he set himself to learn everything there was to know about all the duties of his office. It is difficult to do justice to such a rich personality.
