Ian Munro was born in Withington, Manchester, in 1935. He was influential in setting up the Synchrotron Radiation Source at Daresbury in the 1960s, the first of its kind in the world. According to the Institute of Physics, Munro was the first researcher to realise that synchrotron radiation might be "the means of uniquely tunable and intense X-ray sources." By constructing the first x-ray beam line, the NINA SRF, he initiated whole new areas of research, attracting scientists from around the world to Daresbury. By 1994 he was the Director of Daresbury Laboratory.

Professor Munro's achievements were recognised by the Institute of Physics, amongst other institutions, which made him an Honorary Fellow in 2019.