John Walter MacDonald Bannerman (13 August 1932 – 8 October 2008) was a Scottish historian, noted for his work on Gaelic Scotland.
His family was native speakers of Scottish Gaelic, and after leaving school Bannerman studied Celtic languages at the University of Glasgow.
[2][3] Although he considered teaching Gaelic in schools, Bannerman instead took up a post at the Celtic department of the University of Aberdeen before joining the history department at the University of Edinburgh in 1967.
His early works on Dál Riata, the Senchus fer n-Alban, and the Iona chronicles which formed part of the later Chronicle of Ireland are contained in his 1974 book Studies in the History of Dalriada.
He was a major contributor to the record of Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture in the West Highlands published in 1977 and his study of the Beaton family—The Beatons: Medical Kindred in the Classical Gaelic Tradition—appeared in 1986.