engineering

John S. MacDonald

John S. MacDonald is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John S. MacDonald rather than just read about it. In short: John Spencer MacDonald, (August 13, 1936 – December 26, 2019) was a Canadian engineer, businessman, and academic. He was co-founder of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), an aerospace, information systems, and technology company.

Key takeaways

John S. MacDonald belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John S. MacDonald to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John S. MacDonald from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

John Spencer MacDonald, (August 13, 1936 – December 26, 2019) was a Canadian engineer, businessman, and academic. He was co-founder of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), an aerospace, information systems, and technology company. MacDonald served as the chancellor at the University of Northern British Columbia from 2010 through 2016.

Early life and education MacDonald was born in Prince Rupert, British Columbia in 1936 to Neil and Alice MacDonald. His father was a Scottish immigrant and the captain of a BC Fisheries inspection vessel responsible for inspecting offshore fishing fleets throughout the north coast of BC. As a child, John was exposed to marine radio technologies at a neighbour's basement shop and discovered that he had a natural aptitude for the systems. By the age of 16 he was spending his summer months traveling up and down the coast fixing radios on the various fleets and tourist boats. Upon graduation from high school he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to attend the school of Applied Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where he graduated with a bachelor's degree with honours in electrical engineering in 1959. Following his program at UBC, he was accepted to the engineering program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a master's degree in 1961 and PhD in electrical engineering in 1964.

Career As an undergraduate student at UBC, MacDonald spent his first three summers on a survey crew in Northern British Columbia. After his fourth and fifth years he worked as a student engineer at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, where he met his future wife, Alfredette, before moving to Boston to attend MIT. Upon graduation from MIT, where he had worked as a teaching assistant and discovered an aptitude for teaching, MacDonald aspired to be a professor at the prestigious school. He was offered a position as an assistant professor at MIT and spent a year in this role when he was approached by UBC to join the staff of the electrical engineering department there, which he accepted. In 1965 he moved his young family back to Vancouver and started his career as a professor at UBC. By 1968 he was feeling the urge to try his hand at entrepreneurship and, with his friend and colleague, Vern Dettwiler, founded MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates in the basement of his Vancouver home in 1969 while continuing to serve as a professor at UBC. By 1973, the demands of his role at MDA caused him to leave the university and work full time with the fledgling technology company. He served as president and CEO of MDA until 1982, and as chairman of the board from 1982 to 1998. In addition to professorships in electrical engineering at MIT and UBC, MacDonald has served in an advisory capacity to the government and on the board of directors of numerous companies. In 2001, MacDonald co-founded Day4 Energy, a company that designed, manufactured and sold high performance solar electric modules. Day4 Energy went on to have one of the largest IPOs in Canada in 2007, at over $100 million and grew to almost 300 employees. In 2014, MacDonald retired from Day 4 Energy.

Honours MacDonald was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in November 1988 and invested in April 1989. In 2008 MacDonald was awarded the British Columbia Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) Impact Award for Person of the Year in recognition of his contributions to science and the BC High Technology Industry. Day4 Energy also won the Impact Award for Emerging Company of the Year. He was a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), founding Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute MacDonald died on 26 December 2019 at the age of 83.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John S. MacDonald

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John S. MacDonald claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John S. MacDonald before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John S. MacDonald ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John S. MacDonald

In research: John S. MacDonald appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John S. MacDonald in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John S. MacDonald is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1936 births, 2019 deaths, Academic staff of the University of British Columbia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John S. MacDonald outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study John S. MacDonald in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John S. MacDonald means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John S. MacDonald out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John S. MacDonald in simple terms?

Why does John S. MacDonald matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John S. MacDonald?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John S. MacDonald.