Hector Munro Macdonald, 1865-1935

Hector Munro Macdonald was born in Edinburgh in 1865, the son of Donald MacDonald, originally of Kiltearn, Ross-shire, and his wife Annie, daughter of Hector Munro of Kiltearn. Hector’s earliest education was in Edinburgh, but after the removal of his parents to Fearn, in Easter Ross, he went to school there, and afterwards to the Royal Academy, Tain, Old Aberdeen Grammar School, and the University of Aberdeen, where he graduated in 1886 with First-Class Honours in Mathematics and won a Fullerton Scholarship. Of the Aberdeen honours graduates in Arts of his year—twenty-two in all—six went on to Oxford or Cambridge, and of these, four ultimately became Fellows or University Professors. Macdonald proceeded to Clare College, Cambridge, taking the Mathematical Tripos in 1889. The list of Wranglers was one of considerable distinction ; Sir Gilbert Walker was senior, Sir Frank Dyson second, Macdonald fourth, and A. S. Ramsey (President of Magdalene) sixth. He was elected to a fellowship at Clare in 1890, and in 1891 was awarded a Smith’s Prize for an essay on “Stress in the Dielectric.”