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Donald Portway

academic, soldier, and author

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ59785794
Source-derived summary

Donald Portway (28 June 1887 – 19 March 1979) was a British academic, soldier and author.

Portway was educated at Felsted School and Downing College, Cambridge. He was an assistant master at Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth from 1912 to 1914 when he joined the Royal Engineers. In 1918 he became a Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 1919 he became a lecturer in Engineering at the university. He was subsequently Tutor, Senior Tutor and President of St Catharine's before becoming its Master in 1946, a post he held until 1957. He was Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Khartoum from 1957 until his retirement in 1961.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Donald Portway” as academic, soldier, and author. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1887, 1979, 1912, 1914—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1887-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Donald, Portway and academic can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as academic, soldier, and author. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q59785794. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1887, 1979, 1912 and 1914.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Donald Portway”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Donald Portway primary sources, Donald Portway archive and Donald research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Donald Portway”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Donald Portway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.