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Today’s Doodle
celebrates the 94th birthday of British scientist and author Anne
McLaren, who is widely considered one of the most significant
reproductive biologists of the 20th century. Her fundamental
research on embryology has helped countless people realize their
dreams of parenthood.
Anne McLaren was born in London on this day in 1927. As a child, she
had a small role in the 1936 H.G. Wells’ sci-fi film “The Shape of
Things to Come.” In the scene—set in 2054—her great-grandfather
lectured her on the advancement of space technology that had put
mice on the moon. McLaren credits this formative, albeit fictional,
history lesson as one of the early inspirations for her love of
science. She went on to study zoology at the University of Oxford,
where her passion for science only grew as she learned from talented
biologists such as Peter Medawar—a Nobel laureate for his research
on the human immune system.
In the 1950s, McLaren began to work with mice to further understand
the biology of mammalian development. While the subjects of her
research were tiny, the implications of their study proved massive.
By successfully growing mouse embryos in vitro (in lab equipment),
McLaren and her colleague John Biggers demonstrated the possibility
to create healthy embryos outside of the mother’s womb.
These landmark findings—published in 1958—paved the way for the
development of in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology that
scientists first used successfully with humans twenty years later.
However, the development of IVF technology carried major ethical
controversy along with it. To this end, McLaren served as the only
research scientist on the Warnock Committee (est. 1982), a
governmental body dedicated to the development of policies related
to the advances in IVF technology and embryology. Her expert council
to the committee played an essential role in the enactment of the
1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act—watershed, yet
contentious, legislation which limits in-vitro culture of human
embryos to 14-days post embryo creation.
In 1991, McLaren was appointed Foreign Secretary, and later
vice-president, of the world’s oldest scientific institution—The
Royal Society—at the time becoming the first woman to ever hold
office within the institution’s 330-year-old history.
McLaren discovered her passion for learning at a young age and
aspired to spark this same enthusiasm for science in children and
society at large. In 1994, the British Association for the
Advancement of Science—an institution dedicated to the promotion of
science to the general public (now the British Science
Association)—elected her as its president. Through the organization
and its events, McLaren engaged audiences across Britain on the
wonders of science, engineering, and technology with the aim of
making these topics more accessible to everyone.
Happy birthday, Anne McLaren. Thank you for all your incredible work
and for inspiring many new generations to come because of it! |
