Jim served on the Rutgers faculty for over 30 years, leaving a lasting impact on the field of microbiology and on the students and faculty with whom he worked alongside. Jim was born in Billings, Montana in 1931. He attended Montana State College in Bozeman Montana, earning a BS in Bacteriology in 1952 and a MS in Bacteriology in 1956. He continued graduate work at UC Davis, earning his PhD in Microbiology in 1963, and post-doctoral research as a National Institutes of Health Post- Doctoral Fellow.
Jim then joined the faculty of the College of Agriculture (later Cook College and now the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences) at Rutgers University in 1965 as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology. He was promoted to Professor in 1971 and served as Chair of the Department from 1969 to 1979.
Jim taught graduate and undergraduate classes in microbiology, such as the course Applied Microbiology, and his research focused primarily on enzymes, toxins, and antibodies. He retired from Rutgers in 1997. In 2011, Jim was honored by a former student, Dennis Fenton and his wife Linda Fenton, who gifted a graduate Fellowship in Jim’s honor, the James Macmillan Endowed Fellowship in Microbiology.
Jim is survived by his wife, Laura Ann Macmillan (Budwell), and his daughters and granddaughters. He is missed by former students, coworkers and friends.