Portrait of Anne McLaren © Emma Wesley (Artist)
Dame Anne McLaren 1927-2007
Pioneering scientist and campaigner
Anne McLaren was a descendant of Priscilla Bright McLaren (the suffragist leader in Edinburgh) and was educated at Oxford before becoming a Lecturer at Edinburgh's Institute of Animal Genetics 1959-1974. Her early research was on mice to elucidate “everything involved in getting from one generation to the next”.
She became an eminent scientist in the field of reproduction, fertility and human genetics moving to London to the Medical Research Council. Her work was vital for the development of stem cell studies, and also for the development of in vitro fertilisation techniques. The Cambridge Laboratory of the Stem Cell Initiative was named after her.
Anne also contributed to defining the ethical and legal implications of these advances and served on high-level government committees (e.g. the Warnock Committee of 1990 and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority). She took senior office in learned societies, becoming the Vice President of the Royal Society and the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr McLaren also worked to encourage other women into science as a Founder and President of AWISE (Association for Women in Science and Engineering).
Anne had three children with her husband Donald Michie before they divorced in 1959. She always campaigned for government assistance for child care, and postgraduate fellowships set up in her name at Nottingham University have £5,000 childcare expenses attached. She was also a lifelong socialist and her son-in-law wrote that “The politics of solidarity were central to Anne, from helping post-war Yugoslavia build a railway to actively supporting trade union struggles nearer home”.
In 1975 she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, in 1986 a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and in 1993 she was made a DBE.