Ian Ross - Telegraph Eventually, he rose through the managerial ranks to become president of Bell Laboratories, from 1979 to 1991, when he had the difficult task of presiding over a major reorganisation following a ruling by the US Justice Department that the monopoly Bell telephone system should be broken up into independent companies. Ross had never intended to stay in America. When he first joined Bell Labs he was planning on returning to England within a year. He never did. Ian Munro Ross was born on August 15 1927 at Southport. His parents" marriage broke up when he was very young and he did not see his father again until he was about 20. After leaving King George V Grammar School, Southport, Ian went up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to read Mechanical Engineering. He stayed on to take a PhD in Electrical Engineering . In 1959 Ross was named director of Bell Labs" semiconductor laboratory. Three years later he became director of the semiconductor device and electron tube laboratory at Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 1964, he was appointed managing director of Bellcomm, a Bell System subsidiary which provided 400 staff to lend vital systems engineering support for Nasa's Apollo manned space flight programme. He was elected president of Bellcomm in 1968. Ross returned to Bell Laboratories in 1971, as executive director of the network planning division. He became vice president of network planning and customer services in 1973, executive Vice-President in 1976 and president in 1979. He retired in 1992. Ross was a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and of the US National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). His awards included the 1963 IEEE Morris N Liebmann Memorial Award "for contributions to the development of the epitaxial transistor and other semiconductor devices." He is survived by his wife, Tina, and by their son and two daughters. Ian Ross, born August 15 1927, died March 10 2013