Archives West Finding Aid

Lauren R. Donaldson was a professor of fisheries and director of the Applied Fisheries Laboratory and its successors at the University of Washington. Donaldson was born near Tracy, Minnesota in 1903 and received his B.A. degree in 1926 from Intermountain Union College in Helena, Montana. After arriving in Seattle in 1930, he earned his M.S. degree (1931) and Ph.D. degree (1939) in Fisheries at the University of Washington. Donaldson joined the University of Washington faculty in 1932 as an assistant instructor and launched a program to improve the size, growth rate, and spawning capacity of rainbow trout. Donaldson was well-known for his selective breeding experiments that produced five species of hatchery-raised salmon and a super-strain of rainbow trout, known as the Donaldson trout, which came to be raised world-wide. He also secured funding for a hatchery on the campus and, through that project, demonstrated that salmon can be reared to return to their point of release, establishing a salmon run which brings 5,000 to 7,000 fish back to the University campus each year.

Another significant aspect of Donaldson's career was his involvement in radiobiological studies in both field and laboratory settings between 1946 and 1973. In 1943, the Applied Fisheries Laboratory was established at the University of Washington under the authority of the Manhattan District of the Army Corps of Engineers. The initial purpose of the laboratory was to study the effects of radiation on aquatic organisms. Lauren Donaldson was chosen to direct the laboratory, and did so until 1958 when he headed its successor, the Laboratory of Radiation Biology (renamed the Laboratory of Radiation Ecology in 1966).

In 1946, Donaldson, his Applied Fisheries Laboratory colleague Arthur D. Welander, and Washington State Game Department biologist Clarence F. Pautzke, were selected to serve as radiation monitors for Operation Crossroads, the first atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. They also performed sampling and analysis of specimens as part of the unofficial "Division of Radiobiology" that formed within the expedition's Radiological Safety Section in response to growing interest, on the part of the scientists present, in the disposition of radioactive material through biological systems. Altogether the Bikini and Eniwetok Atolls were the subject of seven separate series of atmospheric nuclear bomb tests between 1946 and 1958, and Donaldson planned or led the radiobiological activities for surveys and resurveys of Bikini and Eniwetok in 1947, 1948 (Operation Sandstone), 1949, 1952 (Operation Ivy, the first hydrogen bomb test), 1954 (Operation Castle), 1956 and 1964 to determine the effects of radiation on the islands' flora and fauna, and to assess the extent of recovery from exposure with the passage of time. In June 1954, some months after the crew of the Japanese fishing vessel Fukuryu Maru were exposed to radioactive fallout from the Operation Castle tests at Bikini, Donaldson participated in a joint Japanese-American scientific conference, which permitted American scientists to share their knowledge of radiation and its effects with their Japanese counterparts, significantly easing tensions arising from the incident.

Another significant aspect of the Applied Fisheries Laboratory's work with the Atomic Energy Commission was the Fern Lake Mineral Metabolism Program, which examined, through the use of radioactively tagged minerals, the absorption of nutrients by the relatively impoverished ecosystem of Fern Lake in Kitsap County, Washington. Donaldson also served as consultant and observer for tests in Nevada in the spring of 1951, acted as consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission on the Hanford Engineering Works, and drafted a plan for the biological study of the area designated for Project Chariot (a never-implemented plan to create a harbor on the coast of northwest Alaska).

Donaldson lent his expertise to the planning of the Seattle Aquarium, serving on the Aquarium Committee of the Washington Oceanographic Commission.

Donaldson retired from the faculty in 1973; however, he continued to work on campus as professor emeritus, meeting with researchers, faculty, and students. Professor Donaldson received numerous awards, including the Shinkishi Hatai Medal from the Japanese government in 1975 and the University of Washington's Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus award in 1987. He died on November 22, 1998.