Donald Bertram McIntyre
Donald Bertram McIntyre was born at Edinburgh on 15th August 1923, the second child and elder son of Rev.
Robert Edmond McIntyre, then minister of Orchardhill, Giffnock.
His mother was Mary, daughter of Dr
Thomas Brown Darling and Jessie Walker. The family moved to Edinburgh on R.E. McIntyre’s translation to
Morningside High Church in 1935. Having started his schooling in Giffnock, Donald moved in Edinburgh to
George Watson’s College. In 1939 he and his brother were evacuated to Speyside where he became Dux of
Grantown Grammar School in 1941.
McIntyre entered Edinburgh University to major in chemistry and was sufficiently enthralled (and
competent) while an undergraduate to collaborate with Dr Arnold Beevers of that Department to examine the
crystallography of fluor-apatite in relation to tooth and bone structure.
Some twenty years later McIntyre’s
interest in X-Ray fluorescence was rekindled when a machine was purchased by Pomona College for the
chemical analyses of granite by Dr A.K. Baird, one of his staff. In 1967 the Pomona team of Baird, McIntyre
and Welday analysed the geochemistry and structure of a granite batholith in California. They carried out over
1000 XRF analyses and using 1960’s 'high-speed computers', trend surface and vector analyses, processed and
interpreted their data.
McIntyre and his small team added computing and more rigorous statistical and
sampling techniques to their armoury, and Professor Bernard Leake has told us that Pomona became the leading
laboratory in the world for the XRF analysis of granitic rocks.
Dr Robert Campbell, McIntyre’s Director of Studies at Edinburgh, persuaded him to change his degree
course from chemistry to that of geology and he graduated with First Class Honours in 1945.
The Grant
Institute of Geology at that time was a hotbed of 'granitisation', the much criticised theory by which granitic
rocks are formed by metamorphism rather than by the intrusion of molten magma.
Under supervision of the
shy but brilliant Professor Arthur Holmes and egged on by the professor’s exuberant wife, Dr Doris Reynolds,
McIntyre mapped the Loch Doon granite in the Southern Uplands of Scotland and was awarded a PhD in 1947.
Later that summer, with the help of a Cross Research Fellowship, he travelled to Neuchâtel to work under
Professor Wegmann, the leading structural geologist in Switzerland. That year abroad, doubtless organized by
Holmes with a view to giving his gifted student a better understanding of the structural implications of
granitisation, gave McIntyre an insight into the world of structural geology, Alpine-style, with its emphasis on
fold-axes, stereographic projections and petrofabrics.
McIntyre returned to the Grant Institute in 1948 as
Lecturer in Economic Geology and, as a round peg in a square hole, relished the opportunity to learn blowpipe
analysis and adapt his expertise in stereographic projection to the needs of mining surveyors.
In 1949 he
presented the results of his research on the Loch Doon granite to the Geological Society of London where he
argued that the apparently intrusive granodiorite and granite were transformed country rock.
He met strong
opposition from the petrological establishment including Drs A.G. McGregor, Deer and Nockolds.
However
Dr J. Phemister was pleased to find a rising generation of petrologists at once so enthusiastic and. eloquent.
Five years later the Publications Committee of that Society was still requiring changes to the submitted paper
but McIntyre by this time was heading for a new life in California. His Loch Doon work remains unpublished.
McIntyre had other geological interests besides granite.
Using his new Alpine techniques he mapped fold
structures in Highland rocks in Strathspey and presented the results to another meeting in the Geological Society
in 1951. He was able to project folds seen at the surface to depths of eight miles and received warm plaudits in
the ensuing discussion.
This time his paper was published.
In the same year he was awarded the Daniel
Pigeon Fund from the Geological Society for the promotion of original research.
In 1951 he was appointed
Secretary of Section C (Geology) when the British Association for the Advancement of Science held its annual
meeting in Edinburgh. At the end of the meeting he led a party to the Scottish Highlands to look at geological
structures. There he met and attracted the attention of Professor Frank Turner of the University of California
who invited him to spend the summer of 1952 at the Geology Department at Berkeley. McIntyre brought with
him deformed marbles from Strathspey and during that summer discovered some of the complexities of the
deformation of quartz and calcite crystals in both field and laboratory.
Outside geology Donald's zest for life was boundless. He became President of the Edinburgh University
Mountaineering Club and in 1946 a member of Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton's ATC mountain training team
which included the Everest climber and geologist N.E. Odell. He learned to play the bagpipes, initially in the
basement of the Grant Institute of Geology, but was banished to the relative isolation of Craigmillar Quarry.
His year in Neuchâtel (1947-48) gave him an appreciation of wine which, on his return to Edinburgh, led him to
found the Oenological Club the rules of which were so bibulous that the club did not survive beyond its
inaugural meeting!
McIntyre quickly became known to academia in the States through the networking of Dr Frank Turner.
Donald's personality and scientific work attracted the attention of Pomona College, a small liberal arts institute
at Claremont, California where Dr A. O. Woodford, Head of the Department of Geology, was about to retire.
So McIntyre left his cold but stable Scotland in 1954 to become associate professor at Pomona College and
succeeded Professor Woodford in the following year in warm unstable California surrounded by earthquakes
and growing mountains – and a staff of two. He left Scotland in the midst of controversy about the structure of
Ben Lui which he claimed was not a recumbent fold as described by Sir Edward Bailey. Ben Lui is now known
to be a large-scale recumbent syncline: and yet McIntyre was not wrong in his detailed analysis of the fold.
Controversy on folds in the Highlands of Scotland continued in the American Journal of Geology.
Dr Mike
Johnson has reminded us that McIntyre is now remembered as a pioneer in the use of structural analysis and
petrofabrics in the Highlands of Scotland, built on his Swiss experience.
Donald returned to Scotland in 1957, a visit which culminated in his marriage to Ann Alexander of
Edinburgh and Moffat in December of that year. In 1961 their son, Ewen, was born whose happy nature and
special needs, because of cerebral palsy, have had a profound influence on the family and all who know him.
Pomona is a college with generous donors, including Frank Seaver of Hydril and his wife Blanche. The
Seaver Science Centre for Geology and Biology was opened in 1959 just five years after McIntyre had been
appointed. In 1964 a state of the art IBM 360 computer was bought. As Donald said later 'Mrs Seaver insisted
that I must have one for my own department!' Indeed McIntyre drove to the IBM centre in Riverside to place
the order at a cost of $268,000 on the very day that the new computer was publicly announced. He already had
access to the Physics Department’s Clary DE-60 for use in crystallography and geochronometry.
Shortly
afterwards McIntyre was appointed first Director of the Pomona Computer Centre. He became adept at using
the IBM 360 to plot contour maps showing not only elevation, but also population density and mineral content.
Other applications followed including the analysis of poetry.
Help with computerizing finance and other
business matters was soon requested by the Registrar's office.
Indeed, it was claimed that McIntyre was so
adept at the uses of the machine that he became more expert than the IBM systems engineer assigned to
Pomona. McIntyre's early and enthusiastic exposure to the world of computing brought him into contact with
gifted mathematicians.
Kenneth Iverson, who developed APL (A Programming Language) became a close
friend. McIntyre learned APL and its derivative language J and in 1994 received the Kenneth E Iverson award
for his outstanding contribution to the development and application of APL.
The 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Geological Society of America gave McIntyre the
opportunity to show his diverse talents at the conference and in the subsequent celebratory book (1963), firstly
as a historian of geology, with Hutton at the centre and secondly as a self-taught statistician investigating
precision in the age-dating of rocks. Surprisingly Arthur Holmes, his mentor and internationally renowned as
the Father of Age Dating, was not mentioned.
McIntyre’s contribution to this volume James Hutton and the
Philosophy of Geology was his first published work on the history of science. It was an appropriate debut for
McIntyre who had walked the same streets as had Hutton; was a Fellow of this Society of which Hutton was a
founding Fellow, and had graduated from the Geology Department of the University of Edinburgh which had
counted among its professors Sir Archibald Geikie who revived Hutton’s right to be regarded as the Founder of
Modern Geology. In this paper McIntyre brought to the notice of a North American readership the dispute over
Hutton’s possible debt to the writings of G H Toulmin or, as appears more probable, the reverse, which had
been revived or perhaps initiated by S I Tomkeieff.
Tomkeieff’s work had remained unnoticed until the
publication of McIntyre’s paper in which he gladly acknowledged his debt to Tomkeieff.
In 1970 McIntyre
received a Guggenheim Fellowship for a sabbatical year in Edinburgh to research The Rise of Scottish Geology,
an ambitious task which occupied his thoughts for the rest of his life.
In his address at the Opening Convocation of the Centennial Year of Pomona College in 1987, McIntyre
invited his audience to set out on a “Critical Inquiry” in which “We are to take nothing for granted.
On the
contrary, we will use our intellectual microscopes to scrutinize all statements and conclusions…”
Such a
historical approach had long been applied in Scottish law and became the metaphysical basis of Scottish science
in the Enlightenment.
Donald McIntyre was not merely a scholar of that Enlightenment but a product and
embodiment of it. James Hutton’s Edinburgh: The Historical, Social, and Political Background the subject of
McIntyre’s address to the Hutton bicentennial meeting organised by this Society was a tour de force in this
approach.
This extraordinary mélange of dates and relationships proved to be a revelation to many unfamiliar
with Scottish history.
McIntyre’s research on Hutton and Clerk of Eldin as field geologists will probably be recognised as his most
important historical contribution. When the text of the third volume of Hutton’s Theory of the Earth with Proofs
and Illustrations edited by Sir Archibald Geikie was published in 1899 it revealed much about the excursions
which Hutton had undertaken with his friends in search of proofs of his theory in the field. In particular it was
known that many of these geological proofs had been drawn by John Clerk of Eldin but their whereabouts was not
known and substitute illustrations had to be made for Geikie’s edition. As we have seen McIntyre was interested
in the genesis of Hutton’s ideas and as part of his research he studied the background and interests of Hutton’s
friends.
Searches in the Scottish Record Office revealed several small diaries in which Clerk of Eldin wrote
details of his travels in Galloway with Hutton and of his geological observations.
By happenstance, while
McIntyre was so engaged, a folio of drawings was found at Penicuik House which Sir John Clerk brought to The
Royal Scottish Museum where they were recognised as “The Lost Drawings” of Clerk of Eldin and those of Arran
by his son Lord Eldin. This led to their publication in 1978 together with an explanatory book of which McIntyre
was a co-author. He was also co-author with A McKirdy of James Hutton, The Founder of Modern Geology, an
excellent popular account of Hutton published in 1997.
McIntyre’s last published work, in 2008, The
Royal Society of Edinburgh, James Hutton, the
Clerks of Penicuik and the Igneous Origin of
Granite shows that his interest in Hutton and his
contemporaries remained as lively as ever. The
gem contained in this paper is McIntyre’s
recognition and proof that certain boulders
collected by Hutton to illustrate the relationship
of the Athol granite with the schistus into which
it was intruded and of subsequent vein
intrusions were, as Hutton wrote in the third
volume of the Treatise, from Glen Tarf. Clerk
of Eldin had mistakenly captioned his own
drawings
as
neighbouring
being
from
locality
from
Glen
Tilt,
which
other
illustrative boulders had been collected.
Donald at southeast side of Dail-en-eas Bridge near Forest Lodge, Glen Tilt
in 1975, pointing out fine vein intrusions .
McIntyre was a brilliant speaker and inspirational teacher, perhaps happier speaking than writing.
This
exceptional talent was recognised in 1985 by his election from some 5,000 eligible professors as California’s
Professor of the Year.
In the same year he was awarded the Medal of the Geological Society of China
following a lecture visit to Beijing and Nanjing on the use of computer geology.
In 1989 McIntyre retired from Pomona and, with his family, settled in Perthshire.
Donald immediately
campaigned against what he regarded as the desecration of the Kinfauns churchyard and later against the
quarrying of Dunsinane Hill. His enthusiasm for the worth of the environment soon led to his appointment as
Chairman of Perth Civic Trust.
a
He was a member of the Piobaireachd Society and his understanding of the
great music led him to play it not only on his pipes but also to write the music notation into a computer
programme which is used as a teaching tool at the College of Piping in Glasgow. Professor Donald McIntyre, a
pipe tune played at the Professor’s memorial service, was composed in his honour by his teacher and friend
Norrie Sinclair. Donald McIntyre had bravely fought Parkinson’s disease but died on 21st October 2009.
Gordon Y. Craig
Charles D. Waterston
Donald Bertram McIntyre. BSc, PhD, DSc(Edinburgh), HonDSc(Pomona), FGSAm, FAmAAS, FCalAcadSci,
FEdGS, MGA(London). Born 15 August 1923, Elected FRSE 2nd March 1953, Died 21st October 2009.