Generosity’s Legacy

The first Nobel Prize won for work done on Canadian soil was awarded to a young New Zealand scientist who had actually spent less than a decade in Canada. In 1908, Ernest Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, having returned to England after a few years at McGill University in Montreal. The work he accomplished during the nine years he spent in Canada ignited a new scientific era and eventually ushered in the “nuclear age.”

The noble works of such great men and women are rightly celebrated, yet it is rare to learn of the people whose quiet contributions open the door for the notable achievements of others. Let’s now consider the humble efforts of another individual—a man whose generosity made Rutherford’s efforts possible, along with many other accomplishments. An eccentric and largely unknown gentleman named William Macdonald made substantial donations that helped to enable Rutherford’s famous achievement.

In 1897, Rutherford had just completed a three-year scholarship at Cambridge University in England when he accepted a position at McGill University in the Canadian city of Montreal, far from the centre of scientific research at the time. Rutherford had by this time accumulated significant educational debt, and the McGill position offered a very good salary that would enable him to pay off his obligations and then marry a young lady in New Zealand to whom he had become engaged a few years earlier.

Rutherford expected to find minimal laboratory facilities in Montreal. However, he found instead that the McGill physics labs were among the most advanced in the world at that time. That a fledgling university could afford and acquire such facilities appeared puzzling—but McGill happened to be gifted with a most humble and generous benefactor, William Macdonald.

Funding the Future

Macdonald, born in 1831, was descended from Scottish settlers who had put down roots in what is now the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. He had keen business acumen, and during the American Civil War he made a business of importing raw leaf tobacco from the Confederacy, processing it at his mill in Montreal, then selling pipe and chewing tobacco into the northern states, which could no longer import it from the South. His business flourished, and by the 1870s he was one of the wealthiest men in Canada. Ironically, Macdonald did not use tobacco himself; in fact, he deplored its use, and making such a fortune from its sale caused him considerable guilt.

Macdonald eventually decided to focus on philanthropy, perhaps to make amends to society. At that time, he became friends with Dr. John Dawson, then the principal of McGill College. Macdonald became the largest benefactor to what would become McGill University, pouring the modern-day equivalent of tens of millions of dollars into its buildings, equipment, and professorships. He paid for the construction of buildings that would house the departments of physics, chemistry, and later agriculture.

In 1898, using funds made available by Macdonald and with the recommendation of the great physicist Dr. J. J. Thompson, head of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, England, McGill hired recent Cambridge graduate Ernest Rutherford to continue the research on radioactivity he had been conducting with Thompson. It was not long until Rutherford and his team discovered two types of radioactivity emanating from uranium, which he named alpha rays and beta rays. Rutherford and his team opened the door to understanding the process of radioactive decay, demonstrating how the atoms of one element can decay into the atoms of another. In this, they discovered the principle of the “half-life” of radioactive material. Rutherford even learned how to mutate an atom by bombarding it with alpha particles. His research also allowed him to theorize and eventually propose the existence of an atomic nucleus in the atom, the size and structure of which makes atoms and thus elements distinct from one another. All of this work opened the way to our modern understanding of the structure of atoms and thus the uniqueness of each element.

In 1903, some of Rutherford’s early discoveries were published, and as a result he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of London, a prestigious association of scientists. Despite this English honor, Rutherford continued to work at McGill, where his work was giving the university an international reputation as a top research center.

By late 1906, however, Rutherford realized that he was missing out on association with other leading researchers of his day—contact that was vital to staying on the cutting edge of discoveries. He therefore accepted an eminent position leading a research center being established at Manchester University in England, where he relocated in 1908. That year, Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work done at McGill.

Honors Unlooked For

Back in Montreal, the generous and wealthy Macdonald continued to support McGill and many other charities in the area. Curiously, he was quite frugal in his own life. He funded the facilities constructed to establish the School of Agricultural Science at McGill, and for a time he would go there to buy eggs from its poultry department. This did not last, as historian John Hardy writes: “For a few years he bought eggs from the poultry department of Macdonald College, until one day he told them he would have to stop doing so. ‘I can get them for two cents a dozen less in Montreal’” (“Nobel Pursuit,” CanadasHistory.ca, July 4, 2025).

There were many other acts of Macdonald’s generosity, such as his extensive support for the Montreal General Hospital. Macdonald found fulfillment in his life not in the business that made him wealthy, but in various acts of providing for others and helping to build a lasting legacy that would benefit his nation and humanity as a whole. In spite of his not seeking praise, his actions were appreciated—in 1898, he was knighted by the monarch and became Sir William Macdonald. Upon his death in 1914, he bequeathed “$1,000,000 to Macdonald College, $500,000 to the faculty of medicine at McGill, $300,000 to the McGill Conservatorium of Music, $500,000 to the Montreal General Hospital, and $100,000 to the crematorium company” (“Macdonald (McDonald), Sir William Christopher,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Biographi.ca).

Generosity often produces results the giver will never see. Macdonald almost certainly never imagined that his philanthropy to McGill would help usher in the nuclear age. One thing is for sure, though: God does see the heart that genuinely seeks to be a benefit to others, and He will ensure the generous person’s greater happiness. Indeed, God has a special word of commendation for those who are generous not out of desire for personal glory, but out of a sincere aspiration to contribute to making the world a better place: “The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself” (Proverbs 11:25).