Abstract
WHEN in January 1934 Sir Donald MacAlister died at Cambridge, there passed from among us one of the most influential men of our time. He had been for forty-four years a member of the General Medical Council, and for twenty-seven its president. He had also been principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow for twenty-two years, and its Chancellor for the last five years of his life. It is a remarkable record, particularly when we remember the numerous and varied official and unofficial public duties fulfilled within the same period of life. Both these official posts were concerned with what is called administration, but in MacAlister's career, the administrative faculty was combined with exceptional, not to say extraordinary, capacities in other directions. Here was a man who began as Senior Wrangler at Cambridge in 1877, and was teacher and tutor in his College, linguist, poet, mathematician, physician, physiologist, pharmacologist, biologist, and even moralist. He could apparently have excelled alike in the medical, administrative, judicial or ecclesiastical spheres—an ‘Admirable Crichton’, or a model for Angus Sutherland in William Black's yachting novel, “White Wings”.
Sir Donald MacAlister of Tarbert
his Wife. With Chapters by Sir Robert Rait and Sir Norman Walker. Pp. vii + 392. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1935.) 12s. 6d. net.
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N., G. Sir Donald MacAlister. Nature 136, 929–931 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136929a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136929a0
