Malcolm had four careers: He was an engineer, an educator, a businessman and a public servant.

"He was indomitable," said Mike Boughton, who succeeded him as president of MEDB.

Boughton and Rep. Joe Souki, D-8th (Wailuku, Waihe'e, Waiehu), both credited Malcolm for turning the late Colin Cameron's vision of a high-technology component for Maui's economy into a practical reality.

"He was kind of the skilled one behind Colin Cameron," said Souki.

Boughton described Cameron and Malcolm as a perfectly complementary team: Cameron, who was head of Maui Land & Pineapple Co., as the local boy with the dream of adding a third leg to Maui's economic base; and Malcolm, the expert who made the dream real.

Boughton said Malcolm could "get people to collaborate who you wouldn't have expected to collaborate."

The result was the Maui Research & Technology Park and all its spinoffs.

"Look at that area," said Souki, "with the computer center and all the buildings, where there was nothing before."

It was not easy. Two developers of the park dropped out (for reasons unrelated to events on Maui) before Cameron and a hui of local businessmen decided to do it themselves.

It was a discouraging time. "Don's optimism was the saving of it," said Boughton from his home in Moscow, Idaho.

That and support and federal money funneled to Maui by Sen. Dan Inouye. Inouye could not be reached for comment Monday, but Boughton recalled a time, when he was fairly new to Maui, that Inouye said of Malcolm: "He is sooo persistent."

Malcolm was born in Indianapolis on March 26, 1919. He earned a degree in public service engineering at Purdue University in 1940, then entered the Navy as an enlisted sailor, serving as a radioman on aircraft carriers.

Before World War II was over, he was commissioned as an officer.

He then returned to Purdue to earn a master's degree in industrial engineering. After that he became a team leader at the Operations Research Team at Johns Hopkins University.

He also began teaching, first as assistant professor of industrial engineering at the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1954, he was elected first president of the newly formed American Institute of Industrial Engineers.

Operations research, also called systems analysis, was a wartime development that applied advanced analytical (especially mathematical) methods to help make better decisions.

Malcolm was a leader in refining operations research, and in 1965 Purdue named him a distinguished alumnus for his "profound influence in the combining of industrial engineering with information systems and management."

He was the project leader and co-developer of PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique), which was devised to manage the Polaris missile system program.

In the 1950s, Malcolm worked for Booz Allen in Chicago and for Systems Development Corp. and Operations Research Inc. in Santa Monica. In 1962, he founded Management Technology Inc. In 1967, he became head of the National Safety Standards Division of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In 1970, he returned to the private sector as senior vice president at Computer Applications Inc.

In 1972, he became dean of the College of Business and Economics on California State University's Los Angeles campus.

"Don Malcolm was a great supporter of higher education," said Clyde Sakamoto, chancellor of Maui Community College. "He understood the importance of growing the high-tech work force in collaboration with the college, so we're going to miss him."

During this period, from 1973 to 1979, Malcolm was a member, then chairman, of the Santa Monica Planning Commission.

He retired and moved to Maui in 1981, where Cameron, in league with then-Mayor Hannibal Tavares, was pushing the business and political communities to create new kinds of opportunities for Maui's young people, aside from agriculture and tourism.

Boughton said Cameron quickly realized that Malcolm "was the ideal guy to get it done." The way they worked together "was truly symphonic."

The model Malcolm created for MEDB, Boughton said, was later copied in each of the other counties for their economic development campaigns.

Souki recalled that he and Malcolm worked together on a statewide economic development task force. "He was a good contributor."

Malcolm was president of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation in 1998-2000, wrote three books, and published more than 100 technical papers and articles on engineering.

He is survived by his son, Donald Jr. Memorial services in Indiana and on Maui are pending.