Daly was born on 14 April 1893 in Leamington Spa and educated at Rossall School, 1906-1911, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 1911-1914, and St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, qualifying M.B., B.Ch., Cambridge, in 1918. In addition to completing his medical training, he also served with the Royal Navy Air Service during the First World War. Daly was Assistant in the Physiology Department, University College, London, 1919-1923, and Lecturer in Experimental Physiology, University of Wales, Cardiff, 1923-1927. He held Chairs in Physiology at the Universities of Birmingham, 1927-1933, and Edinburgh, 1933-1947, seconded 1943-1945, as Director of the Medical Research Council's Physiological Laboratory, Armoured Fighting Vehicle Training School, Lulworth, Dorset. He became the first Director of the Agricultural Research Council's Institute of Animal Physiology, Babraham, Cambridge, 1948-1958. He continued in active research in retirement as Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, 1958-1962, and with the financial support from the National Institutes of Health, USA, 1962-1965, at the University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford. Daly was a leading authority on pulmonary and bronchial systems. He died on 8 February 1974. He was elected FRS in 1943.
From the guide to the Papers of: Daly, Ivan de Burgh (1893-1974), 1858-1974, (Wellcome Library)
