Dr. Henry "Harry" McDonald DSc FREng (14 January 1937 – 25 May 2021) was a Scottish-American aeronautical engineer specializing in Computational Fluid Dynamics and Director of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California from 1996 to 2002.
[1] The Henry McDonald Memorial Fund was established in 2021 to support underprivileged and exceptional engineering students at the University of Glasgow to help eliminate barriers facing Scotland's best and brightest.
[3][4] McDonald was co-inventor of a patented novel ultra-high frequency ventilator, which provides life support to critically ill patients with Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome.
[8] McDonald was charged "to take our center into the 21st century and leverage the fact that Ames is located in one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial regions in the world, Silicon Valley.
[13] During his stay at NASA, McDonald also led an independent investigation of a V-22 Osprey accident as chair of the Tiltrotor Aeromechanical Phenomena Assessment Panel, reporting 17 high priority and 11 other safety and stability recommendations to the Assistant Secretary of Defense.
[15] McDonald and Roger Briley pioneered the Block Implicit Method, a scheme capable of obtaining numerical solutions to systems of nonlinear multidimensional partial differential equations.