John Donaldson, Baron Donaldson of Lymington war in 1945. He served in the military government of Schleswig-Holstein, and was demobbed as a lieutenant-colonel aged 25. He married Dorothy Mary Warwick (later known as Dame Mary Donaldson), in 1945, having met her at Middlesex Hospital where she was working as a nurse. She later became the first woman to be a Member of the City of London Court of Common Council, the first female Alderman, the first female Sheriff and, finally, in 1983, the first female Lord Mayor of London. Together, they had two daughters and a son; his wife predeceased him in October 2003. Donaldson was
Simon Donaldson first results gave severe restrictions on the intersection form of a smooth four-manifold. As a consequence, a large class of the topological four-manifolds do not admit any smooth structure at all. Donaldson also derived polynomial invariants from gauge theory. These were new topological invariants sensitive to the underlying smooth structure of the four-manifold. They made it possible to deduce the existence of "exotic" smooth structures—certain topological four-manifolds could carry an infinite family of different smooth structures. After gaining his DPhil degree from Oxford University in 1983, Donaldson was appointed a Junior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, he spent