Donald MacAlister

Sir Donald MacAlister of Tarbert (1854-1934) physician, principal and vice-chancellor and, later, chancellor of the university of Glasgow

Donald MacAlister was born in Perth, Scotland. He was a native speaker of Gaelic. He rose in life from humble beginnings via school at the Liverpool Institute for Boys (founded 1825, closed 1985) to become Senior Wrangler (top mathematician) at Cambridge University in 1877. In November 1877 he was elected a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. He remained a fellow until the end of his life, and was senior tutor from 1900 to 1904. In 1879 he published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on "The Law of the Geometric Mean." The work was in response to a question put by Francis Galton and contains what is now called the log-normal distribution.

After a spell teaching mathematics at Harrow School, MacAlister returned to his original intention of studying medicine, first at Cambridge, later in 1879 at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and for a short time at Leipzig. In 1881 he settled in Cambridge, and took up medical teaching, investigation, and practice, and in 1884, when he graduated M.D., of physician to Addenbrooke's Hospital. He was elected F.R.C.P. in 1886.

MacAlister was a contemporary at St. John's of the first Japanese graduate of Cambridge named Kikuchi Dairoku and they were lifelong friends. MacAlister also assisted Inagaki Manjiro with a petition to the Council of the Senate to allow Japanese students to obtain exemption from the study of Latin and Greek for entrance examinations.

Donald MacAlister was later principal of Glasgow University, 1907-29. See here.

Reference

• MacAlister, Edith F.B. Sir Donald MacAlister of Tarbert, London, 1913

• Japanese Students at Cambridge University in the Meiji Era, 1868-1912: Pioneers for the Modernization of Japan, by Noboru Koyama, translated by Ian Ruxton, (Lulu Press, September 2004, ISBN 1411612566)