Ivan Ballantyne Tait was a consultant in charge of genitourinary medical services at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He was born on 14 September 1928 in Stepps, Lanarkshire, Scotland. His father, also Ivan Tait, was a civil engineer; his mother was Elise Alexander Tait née Forsyth. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, qualifying in 1951. After house posts, he carried out his National Service from 1952 to 1954, serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a medical officer to the Gurkha Rifles in Malaya. He was mentioned in despatches in 1953. He was a senior house officer on the professorial surgical unit and a house surgeon on the neurosurgical unit, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and then a registrar at St Mary's Hospital in London. He went on to become a senior surgical registrar Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. From 1964 to 1966, he was a surgical research fellow at the University of Kentucky, USA. On his return, he was appointed as a consultant surgeon in genitourinary medicine at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and later moved on to Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He became a colonel in the Territorial Army (RAMC), and was an honorary surgeon (Territorial Army) to HM The Queen from 1985 to 1988. He was president of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh and a liveryman of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. In 1965, he married Jocelyn Mary Connell Leggatt. They had two children - Arabella and Alexander - and two grandchildren. Ivan Ballantyne Tait died on 14 November 2004, aged 76.