James Gordon MacGregor

Prof James Gordon MacGregor, FRS FRSE LLD (31 March 1852 in Halifax, Canada – 21 May 1913 in Edinburgh) was a Canadian physicist. He was described as "brilliant, energetic, nervous, impatient", and not suffering fools gladly.

MacGregor's house at 24 Dalrymple Crescent, Edinburgh

The grave of Prof James Gordon MacGregor, Morningside Cemetery, Edinburgh

He was born in Halifax in Nova Scotia on 31 March 1852, the son of Rev Peter Gordon MacGregor DD. He was educated there at the Free Church Academy then studied at Dalhousie University where he graduated MA. He then left Nova Scotia and did postgraduate studies at Edinburgh University, the University of Leipzig and the University of London.

He returned to Nova Scotia to lecture in Physics at his alma mater, Dalhousie University, for one academic year, 1876/1877. In the summer of 1877 he relocated to England to serve as Science Master at Clifton College in Bristol. In 1879 he returned to Dalhousie as a Professor of Physics and stayed in this role for 21 years.

He clearly retained links to Britain as in 1880 he was elected an Ordinary Fellow (rather than Foreign Fellow or Honorary Fellow) of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Peter Guthrie Tait, Alexander Crum Brown, John Hutton Balfour and Edmund Albert Letts. In 1900 he was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.

In 1901 he returned to Britain when he succeeded to Peter Guthrie Tait’s chair of natural philosophy at Edinburgh in 1901. The invitation was impossible to resist: "salary better, equipment good, pension laid on".

He died at his home, 24 Dalrymple Crescent in Edinburgh on 21 May 1913. He is buried in Morningside Cemetery in south Edinburgh. The grave lies in one of the southern rows.

• An Elementary Treatise on Kinematics and Dynamics (1887)

In 1888 he was married to Marion Miller Taylor. She was buried with him when she died in 1938.