Duane Torrance "Mac" McRuer (October 25, 1925 – January 24, 2007) was a scientist, engineer, and expert in aircraft flight and other vehicle controls who cofounded Systems Technology Inc. in 1957.

His family moved to Los Angeles when he was ten years old, which afforded him close proximity to the various museums at Exposition Park, along with the University of Southern California campus.

McRuer played a key role in flight control developments for the Northrop N-9M flying wing, an early forerunner of the B-2 Spirit.

In 1957 McRuer, his wife Betty, and Northrop engineer Irving Ashkenas co-founded Systems Technology Inc. (STI) in Hawthorne, CA.

[1] For the 1992–1993 academic year, he served as the Jerome C. Hunsaker Visiting Professor of Aerospace Systems at MIT, and delivered the Mina Martin Lecture "Human Dynamics and Pilot-Induced Oscillations".

McRuer's books and monographs included "Aircraft Dynamics and Automatic Control," coauthored with Dunstan Graham and Irving Ashkenas.

He chaired a National Research Council study on the phenomenon of pilot induced oscillations, which produced recommendations for improving aircraft safety.

[15] He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1988 with the citation "For pioneering application of guidance and control theory and to experimental man-machine interactions.

Recognizing the need for better trained hiking and mountaineering leaders, he wrote the Sierra Club Leadership Reference Book, and edited future versions.