Old Photograph Ross Memorial Hospital Dingwall Scotland

Old photograph of nurses outside the Ross Memorial Hospital in Dingwall, Scotland. James Alexander MacDonald was a 20th century Scottish botanist and plant pathologist. Friends and family called him Jay MacDonald. He was born in Dingwall on 17 June 1908 one of five children to Eliza Kelman and James Alexander MacDonald, HM Chief Inspector of Schools for the Scottish Highlands and a former Rector of Leith Academy in Edinburgh. He was home educated by his mother at Kilmacolm then at Inverness Royal Academy. He then went to Edinburgh University to study Agriculture but then decided to also study botany as a joint degree. He continued as a postgraduate in Botany, gaining his doctorate in 1935. On gaining his doctorate he began lecturing in Botany at St Andrews University in Fife and was given his professorship in 1961. In the same year he became the joint founder and official Keeper of St Andrews Botanic Garden. In the Second World War he served as a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF in India and Malaya, mainly working in radar. In 1940 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Robert James Douglas Graham, Sir William Wright Smith, Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson and Alexander Nelson. He served as Vice President of the Society from 1961 to 1964. He retired in 1977. Although sickly in his early life he developed a love of active sports by his late teens, including rugby and hockey. By later life he had also developed a love of golf, and was ideally located in St Andrews for this pastime. He was also a keen angler. He died in St Andrews on 26 April 1997.



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