From Don H

Ian Foster Donaldson was born in Linlithgow, Scotland in October 1929. From the Veterans database we know he started work in Marconi’s Research Division in 1950, presumably just after graduating. For a number of years he was heavily involved in the development of a passive radar system which could, so to speak, ‘see’ through enemy jamming of our radars; there are various explanations of this fiendishly clever system on the MOGS and other sites.

 Ian fairly rapidly rose to be a Group Chief, and then Technical Manager of what had by then become Marconi Radar’s Sytems Engineering Department, overseeing many of us in the design of projects to meet sophisticated customer requirements, helping to market them and then deliver them. It was an exciting but incredibly demanding time, not least as software became ever more essential and complicated.

 At one stage in the 70s Ian became Joint Manager of one of Radar Systems internal divisions, but was soon overtaken by endless Company reorganisations. Subsequently I worked for him in a small group doing Product Management, but I think he was very pleased in 1980 to be offered the post of Principal of Marconi College, particularly providing essential training for customer engineers, etc. Unfortunately around 1989 he suddenly lost the sight in one eye; cause unknown to me. So he took slightly early retirement and returned to his roots in Linlithgow, where he died at the beginning of June 2007.

 Ian was renowned for his attention to detail, and for very occasionally showing a streak of wry humour. I suspect he was much more relaxed socialising with long-time colleagues, notably on Hogmanay.

From Alan M

Ian was my boss for a few years when I was working for Fred Kime at Writtle road and I also worked with him on Fur Hat in Sweden,.

Ian was  a very honest, clever and kind man to work for who treated people with fairness and sympathy and one could always rely on his judgement.

Very sorry to see that one more of the good guys has left us.