Background
He was the son of the writer Hector Carsewell Macpherson. Macpherson was born in Edinburgh in 1888.
He was the son of the writer Hector Carsewell Macpherson. Macpherson was born in Edinburgh in 1888.
University of Edinburgh.
His 1940 work Biographical Dictionary of Astronomy was later incorporated into the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, which was first published in 2007. As a child, Macpherson had rheumatic fever. The illness was the reason he did not attend school.
Instead, he was taught at home until he went to university.
At age 13, he was given a telescope. Macpherson set up an observatory in the family garden with the gift.
In 1911, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, proposed for fellowship by the Astronomer Royal Frank Watson Dyson. Eight years later, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
He served five years at a church in Louden, Ayrshire.
In 1921, Macpherson returned to Edinburgh, and was named the minister of the Guthrie Memorial Church. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy from Edinburgh in 1923, for his research on the Covenanter movement. Macpherson married Catherine Anne Chisholm in 1917, with whom he had four children: Hector, Fergus, Mari Margaret Anne, and Catherine Isabel.
Royal Astronomical Society. Royal Society of Edinburgh.
