The MacDonald Memorial Lecture at the University of Manitoba is named in his honour.
He was born on 24 July 1920 in Glasgow the son of George MacDonald, an engineer in Halley's Industrial Motors, a company run by his father-in-law.
In the Second World War he served in the REME as an Instructor at the Military College of Science in Bury.
His proposers were John F. Allen, Edward R. Andrew, Dirk ter Haar and Max Born.
[4] He married Moira Lawrie the daughter of his neighbour in Edinburgh and his teenage sweetheart.