Background
Fred Walter McNair was the son of Hugh A. Wilson McNair and Mary Jane (Dorland) McNair. He was born at Fennimore, Wisconsin.
Fred Walter McNair was the son of Hugh A. Wilson McNair and Mary Jane (Dorland) McNair. He was born at Fennimore, Wisconsin.
McNair's father, a farmer and surveyor, kindled an early and permanent interest in mathematics and allied subjects in young McNair, who for two undergraduate years was instructor in mathematics at Wisconsin University.
After graduation in 1891, McNair served as assistant professor of mathematics at Michigan Agricultural College, 1892-93, from which he was called to Michigan College of Mines as professor of mathematics and physics in 1893. In 1899, he was made the president of Michigan College of Mines, a position which he occupied with distinction for the rest of his life. In June 1924, as he was returning from an engineers' meeting in Boulder, Colo. , he was killed in a railroad wreck near Buda, Illinois.
When the United States entered the war, McNair was temporarily relieved from his college duties in order to join the staff of the Bureau of Standards, where, in cooperation with J. F. Hayford and L. J. Briggs, he engaged in the successful development of an instrument for directing the gun-fire of battleships. The determination of the proper elevation of the guns formerly depended upon the visibility of the sea-horizon, which was often obscured by fog, or smoke of battle.
This instrument, based upon gyroscopic action, provided an artificial horizon and could be used below decks regardless of fog, smoke, or the roll and pitch of the ship. But it was as an educator that McNair did his greatest work. Slender in physique, he was given an effective presence by his keen mentality and wide, sensitive, and sympathetic understanding of men and their problems. For nearly fifty years, he was actively identified with the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, of which he was president in 1904-05.
He was a vice-president of section D, 1904-05; secretary of the council, 1905-06; general secretary, 1906-07. His valuable collections of Myxomycetes is now deposited with the University of Wisconsin.
In 1917, acting on a suggestion of the War Department, McNair organized a committee which united 41 leading engineering colleges of the country in a publicity campaign - the first instance of such college cooperation. He represented the Society for Promotion of Engineering Education as a member of the Joint Conference Committee established by the National Industrial Conference Board for the study of engineering education as related to the industries. He has engaged in various expert investigations for private interests, and has been a contributor on physical, engineering, and educational subjects to technical and scientific periodicals.
For nearly fifty years he was actively identified with the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, of which he was president in 1904-05.
The deep copper mines of the Lake Superior country gave an opportunity for unique physical research, and in cooperation with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey McNair measured the force of gravity a mile underground. He also studied the method of transferring the azimuth of a line on the earth's surface to the bottom of a mine by means of two plumb-lines.
Extended observations on pairs of plumb-lines over 4400 feet long in vertical mine shafts showed that some pairs hung nearly parallel while others were an inch or more farther apart at the bottom than at the top. McNair found that this divergence was produced by air currents and emphasized the necessity of eliminating air circulation wherever long plumb-lines are used. He next sought to determine experimentally, by means of falling spheres, the easterly deviation which a falling body theoretically undergoes because of the earth's rotation, and to study the air resistance of falling spheres.
A steel ball was suspended motionless over the center of a deep shaft and the supporting silken thread was burned away. But the ball was invariably deflected laterally in its downward course, lodging in the timbers lining the walls of the shaft, and never reached the bottom. This was an early demonstration of an aerodynamic principle, now widely recognized, that a slight asymmetry in the airflow around a body produces a lateral force.
McNair was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, a member of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, a member of the American Physical Society
McNair's chief avocation was biology, and in the company of his four children, he took the keenest delight in roaming the forests near his home in search of Myxomycetes, a curious group of slime fungi which possess the remarkable habit of crawling slowly over decaying stumps and logs.
When the United States entered the war, McNair was temporarily relieved from his college duties in order to join the staff of the Bureau of Standards, where, in cooperation with J. F. Hayford and L. J. Briggs, he engaged in the successful development of an instrument for directing the gun-fire of battleships.
McNair married Berta Philbrick of Fennimore, Wisconsin, in 1886.
