David Keith Chalmers MacDonald, 1920-1963

David Keith Chalmers MacDonald was born on 24 July 1920 at Glasgow, where his father, George MacDonald, an engineer, was then Engineering Manager of Halley’s Industrial Motors. Interest in mathematics and engineering was strong on both the father’s and the mother’s sides of the family. The grandfather, Peter MacDonald, took an M.A. at Edinburgh University, and having done well in mathematics went on to teach the subject at Keith Academy in Banffshire. Later, in 1884, he left mathematics to enter the Church and in 1888 he married Helen, the daughter of James Chalmers, originally a schoolmaster, who had later become the manager of a paper mill. Chalmers’s son, Ebenezer, Helen’s brother, backed by his father, founded the firm of E. Chalmers and Company, and in 1933 George MacDonald left Halley’s to join Chalmers & Co. as a director. The maternal grandfather, David Halley, was also an engineer and originally engaged in shipbuilding on the Clyde. He left to join the firm of Burmeister and Wain in Copenhagen of which eventually he became sole director. One of his sons, George H. Halley, also an engineer, founded Halley’s Industrial Motors which George MacDonald entered in 1913. George MacDonald himself went to Edinburgh University where he showed prowess in technical mathematics.