Donald MacAlister
| Sir Donald MacAlister, Bt | |
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| Chancellor of the University of Glasgow |
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In office 1907–1929 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
17 May 1854 Perth, Perthshire, Scotland |
| Died | 15 January 1934 (aged 79) |
| Alma mater | St John's College, Cambridge |
| Profession | Physician |
Sir Donald MacAlister, 1st Baronet KCB (17 May 1854 – 15 January 1934) was a physician, and Principal and Vice-Chancellor and, later, Chancellor of the University of Glasgow. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles intellectual secret society, from 1876.
Donald MacAlister was born in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland, a native speaker of Gaelic. He rose in life from humble beginnings via school at the Liverpool Institute for Boys (founded 1825, closed 1985) to achieve the highest score in the final mathematics examinations at the University of Cambridge in 1877. In November 1877, he was elected a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.
MacAlister remained a fellow of St. John's College until the end of his life, and was senior tutor from 1900 to 1904. In 1879, he published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on "The Law of the Geometric Mean." The work was in response to a question put by Francis Galton and contains what is now called the log-normal distribution.
After a spell teaching mathematics at Harrow School, MacAlister returned to his original intention of studying medicine, first at Cambridge, later in 1879 at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and for a short time at Leipzig. In 1881, he settled in Cambridge, and took up medical teaching, investigation, and practice, and in 1884, when he graduated M.D., became physician to Addenbrooke's Hospital. He was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1886.
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