63 Facts About Ian Donald

Ian Donald was educated in Scotland and South Africa before studying medicine at the University of London in 1930, and became the third generation of doctors in his family.

At the start of World War II, Donald was drafted into the Royal Air Force as a medical officer, where he developed an interest in radar and sonar.

Ian Donald developed a device called the Trip Spirometer, which measured the respiratory efficiency of a neonate.

In September 1954, Ian Donald was promoted to Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow.

Ian Donald secured the construction of the Queen Mother's Maternity Hospital that was built next to the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow.

Ian Donald was born to John Donald and Helen nee Barrow Wilson in 1910.

Ian Donald's father was a general practitioner who came from a Paisley medical family, his grandfather a GP, and his mother a concert pianist.

Ian Donald was the eldest of four children; his siblings were Margaret, Malcolm, and Alison Munro, who later became a leading headmistress.

Ian Donald attended Warriston School in Moffat, and he attended Fettes College, Edinburgh, for secondary education.

However, Ian Donald never completed his education in Scotland, as the family moved to South Africa due to his father's poor health.

Ian Donald continued his secondary education at Diocesan College in Rondebosch, where he studied the classics, music, philosophy, and languages.

In 1930, the family moved back to London and Ian Donald matriculated at the University of London to study medicine at the St Thomas's Hospital Medical School.

Ian Donald was offered a consultancy at Nuclear Enterprises in Edinburgh, a position he held until 1981.

Ian Donald was survived by his wife, his four daughters and thirteen grandchildren.

Ian Donald is buried in the churchyard at St Peters Church in Paglesham, Essex.

Ian Donald started his postgraduate medical training at the end of the 1930s, and planned to specialise in obstetrics with a position in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at St Thomas.

Ian Donald was so successful in the role that he was mentioned in dispatches for bravery after he pulled several airmen from a bomber that had crashed and had set on fire while the bombs were in the airframe.

In 1946, Ian Donald completed his war service and returned to work at St Thomas.

In partnership with Maureen Young, a specialist in perinatal physiology, Ian Donald conducted a study of respiratory disorders in infants.

Ian Donald's study included an examination of available medical respirators, and he was not satisfied with the design and efficiency of the current models.

Later in 1952, Ian Donald resigned his role at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School to take up a position as a reader at the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Royal Postgraduate Medical School located in Hammersmith Hospital.

At the medical school, Ian Donald continued his research into neonatal breathing disorders.

Ian Donald worked to improve the device that he and Young had built: the servo patient-cycled respirator.

In 1953, Ian Donald published a review of best practices in neonatal resuscitation.

Ian Donald found that the negative-pressure device he had built with Young was not ideal, as it was complicated to set up, difficult to use, and required more than one person to operate; the servo respirator seemed to be ideally suited to the long-term treatment of babies with breathing difficulties.

Ian Donald built a positive-pressure respirator that was later known in Hammersmith Hospital as the Puffer.

In May 1954, Donald delivered the Blair-Bell Lecture at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

Ian Donald spoke about atelectasis neonatorum and how his respirator could improve managing the condition.

In September 1954, Ian Donald was appointed by Hector Hetherington to Regius Professor of Midwifery.

Hetherington had to confirm the position with the Secretary of State for Scotland, as it was a government appointment and Ian Donald was proud of his commission that was signed personally by the Queen.

Ian Donald arrived at the plant with a number of fibroids and a large ovarian cyst taken from gynaecology patients.

When Ian Donald met Bernard Donnelly, an employee in the research department of the boilermaker, Ian Donald asked him to demonstrate the device's use by taking an ultrasound image of the bone of his thumb.

Ian Donald experimented with the tissue samples along with a huge steak the company had provided for a control, and determined that ultrasound could be used to scan biological material.

When he returned to the hospital, Ian Donald's goal was to find an ultrasound machine that he could continue to experiment with.

Ian Donald experimented with balloons and condoms filled with water to widen the gap with little success.

Ian Donald was assisted by John Lenihan, a professor of clinical physics, who helped him form images, but the Mark IIb was insufficient for the task and the images produced were of very poor quality.

Brown has learned from a colleague who had installed a specialist bulb in a Western Infirmary theatre, that Ian Donald was using the flaw detector.

Ian Donald noticed that the machine had been converted from using a double probe, one to produce pulses and one to receive the pulses, to a single probe.

Not wanting to insult Ian Donald by explaining why the machine was not working correctly, Brown offered to try and source another machine from somewhere.

Ian Donald set about establishing a framework of use for the device, how it could be used, what the information on the screen meant.

Ian Donald was vomiting and losing weight rapidly; a barium x-ray had confirmed the diagnosis.

Ian Donald agreed with the diagnosis of ascites and applied the probe.

Ian Donald learned of Douglass Howry's work in the United States, which found that an echo could only return to the probe and be recorded if the echo struck the reflecting surface at right angles as the laws of optics required.

Ian Donald believed that too much information was being returned in the image.

Between 1958 and 1959, Ian Donald became increasingly worried about scanning tissue deliberately to ensure he received sufficient detail, from fear of missing them.

Ian Donald then approached the Scottish Hospital Endowments Research Trust and the Department of Health for Scotland.

For much of this period, Ian Donald used his position as Regius Professor and his personal charisma to sell the potential of the ultrasound machine.

Leksell's work was well known to obstetrics and gynaecology professor Alf Sjovall, who was friends with Ian Donald and knew his work; as such, Sjovall sent Sunden to Glasgow.

Around this time, Ian Donald gave a series of lectures in the US.

Ian Donald received many requests for differential diagnosis, so the work was moved to the X-ray department.

Meanwhile, Ian Donald noticed the very sharp echoes that were being produced at the sides of an infant's head, which led to the use of a hand-held probe and the A-mode scanner to detect the presentation of the fetus.

Ian Donald presented the results of the experiments at a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine on 12 January 1962.

Ian Donald was in charge of a maternity unit at the Glasgow Royal Maternity and Women's Hospital that was colloquially known as Rottenrow, which was already very old and unfit for purpose.

Ian Donald then turned to Glasgow University to request more funding and it was secured by Hetherington.

In early 1958, Ian Donald appointed the architect Joseph Lea Gleave, and together they produced a new design for a 112-bed maternity hospital.

Ian Donald's plan was for a hospital with a central block with four wings.

Construction began in June 1960 and Ian Donald appointed Marr to be the master of works, who would give progress reports to Ian Donald each day.

The name of the new hospital was chosen by Ian Donald, who was a great admirer of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

In 1961, Ian Donald wrote a detailed article in the Scottish Medical Journal for a series on hospital planning, in which he described the acute need for new maternity beds in Glasgow, the design of the new hospital, the reason the Yorkhill site was chosen, and why he believed that the increasingly rapid pace of medical research would make the new hospital obsolete within 25 years.

For much of his life, Ian Donald suffered from valvular heart disease as a result of him and his sister Margaret being infected with rheumatic fever when he was young.

Ian Donald's sister had died from a mitral valve replacement surgery that was still in the early stages of development.

Over four years, Ian Donald underwent three major heart operations at Hammersmith Hospital.

Ian Donald published personal accounts of his second and third cardiac operations.