Henry McDonald

Dr. Henry “Harry” McDonald served as the eighth Ames Center Director, from March 4, 1996 to September 19, 2002.

During his tenure, McDonald led Ames as the center emerged from one of the most tumultuous periods in the center’s history, following a zero base review that had been initiated by NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin following budget cuts. In spite of how fraught the time was leading up to McDonald’s arrival, under his leadership, the center flourished. Ames emerged as the agency’s Center of Excellence in Information Technology, took the lead in developing the field of astrobiology at NASA, and founded NASA Research Park, which created multiple partnerships of enduring strategic importance.

McDonald was a native of Scotland and earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in engineering from the University of Glasgow. In the United States, McDonald would become the head of the gas dynamics group at United Technologies Research Center in Hartford, Connecticut. He then went on to found Scientific Research Associates and later moved on to Pennsylvania State University where he served as the assistant director of computational sciences and as a professor of mechanical engineering at the Applied Research Laboratory. McDonald brought to Ames those decades of experience in both academia and industry. As an expert in computational aerodynamics, people at Ames knew and respected his work even before he arrived.

In a message to the Ames workforce shortly after McDonald passed away in 2021, Center Director Eugene Tu noted that McDonald had been instrumental in his own career development and that McDonald had selected Tu for key opportunities to lead the High-Performance Computing and Communications and Information Technology programs. Tu wrote, “I’ve tried to carry on his inestimable legacy at the helm of NASA Ames. I will always be indebted to Harry for his leadership, mentorship, and friendship during the time he served as our center director and in the years since.”