Who was Anne McLaren?,
Google is showing a doodle for the 94th birthday of British scientist and writer Anne McLaren as she was born on April 26, 1927.
She 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.
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 inventions in 1958 led 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, 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 and she was the first woman to ever hold office within the institution’s 330-year-old history – The Royal Society.
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 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.
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