He has been known to spend a few hours in mud waiting for the right moment to snap one of his prize-winning photographs. Born in Chicago and raised in Cicero, MacDonald was in the first graduating class at UIC after the merger of the two Chicago campuses. He has a bachelor's degree in math and a minor in physics. I didn't like school. As a consultant in the computer center, he said he spent more time plotting out 3-D equations than doing his homework.
School is a great place to learn how to think and solve problems, though.
I remember building mousetraps out of whipped-cream cans to catch mice at the computer center. He kicked one, and two mice came scurrying out. I wore a trench coat, like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. They said they needed math and physics expertise, and would I come out next Saturday to take a test with a million other people. It was the cold war, and they wanted someone who, if passed a nuclear formula, would know whether it was bogus or not.