The Duncan MacRae ’09 and Rebecca Kyle MacRae Professorship of Public Policy Analysis was established in 1987 by their son, Duncan MacRae Jr., a former William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of political science and sociology, and his wife, Edith K. MacRae, a UNC-CH professor of cell biology and anatomy.

The MacRae Professorship was the first endowed chair in the Curriculum in Public Policy Analysis. The curriculum’s undergraduate major was established in 1978, and MacRae Jr. served as its founding chair.

Duncan MacRae Sr. was born in Fayetteville in 1891. His father, James Cameron MacRae, was later dean of the law school. Duncan MacRae graduated from UNC with a B.S. in 1909. He received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1917. He served as a chemist in the U.S. Army during World War I and later worked at Westinghouse Corp., and Guggenheim Brothers and served in the U.S. Army.

Duncan MacRae Jr. was born in Glen Ridge, N.J., in 1921. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. in chemistry and physics in 1942. He received his M.A. in electronic physics in 1943 and his Ph.D. in social psychology in 1950, both from Harvard University. He served as a staff member at the MIT Radiation Laboratory and taught at Princeton University, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Chicago before joining UNC’s faculty in 1972.

MacRae Jr.’s major research interests were in the foundations of public policy analysis. He was the author or editor of nine books, including three on public policy analysis. In 1983, he received the Donald Campbell Award for innovative methods in public policy studies from the Policy Studies Organization.

He was a member of the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, and the American Economic Association and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in 2008.

Edith Krugelis MacRae was born in Waterbury, Conn., in 1919. She graduated from Bates College in Maine with a B.S. in biology and chemistry in 1940. She earned an M.S. in 1941 and a Ph.D. in 1946, both in zoology from Columbia University.

Edith MacRae taught at Vassar College and served as a post doctoral fellow at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark, and at Yale University before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was the first woman member of the biology faculty. She also taught at the University of Illinois School of Medicine and received a Guggenheim Fellowship for research at the University of California at Berkeley before joining the UNC faculty in 1972.

Her research dealt with cell biochemistry, invertebrate structure, the human blood system, and functions of blood and connective tissue cells. She also received teaching awards at the University of Illinois and at UNC.

After she retired in 1989, she developed interests in geology, water coloring, poetry and jewelry making. Edith MacRae died in 1995.

Duncan and Edith MacRae were married in 1950; they had one daughter, Amy (B.S. ’81).

Dan Gitterman is currently the MacRae Professor.