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Anne McLaren is about to make history. On 30 November, she takes up
the post of foreign secretary of the Royal Society, one of the most prestigious
honorary positions in British science. In doing so she becomes the first
woman to hold office in the Royal Society in its entire 330-year existence.

McLaren, who has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1975, is an
eminent embryologist and director of the Medical Research Council’s Mammalian
Development Unit at University College London. ‘A very energetic individual
who’s made an impact in many different areas,’ is how one colleague describes
her. ‘An intellectual giant who’s very good at integrating knowledge. .
. One of the most intelligent scientists of her generation,’ is the judgment
of another.

Meeting her at the unit is an extraordinary experience. Her laboratory
is a cluttered celebration of academic industry, complete with piles of
microscope slides in trays, huge sheaves of papers on shelves and equipment
stacked beneath the benches. The work surfaces are filled to capacity, except
for a square foot of bench space – just room for the tape recorder and two
cups of coffee. Browning sticky tape on the walls hints at an extensive
gallery of photographs, now gone except for pictures of Darwin and Mendel.
Beneath their gaze sits McLaren herself: petite, polite, and as sharp as
a lancet. ‘We are rather short of space here,’ she says, ‘and of course
the director has to have the smallest room.’

McLaren’s new post entails overseeing the Royal Society’s dealings with
its counterparts overseas – a form of intellectual traffic that has traditionally
played an important role in the society’s affairs. In 1719, a Fellow by
the name of Robert Keck left £500 to the Royal Society, instructing
that the income be bestowed on a Fellow appointed ‘to carry on a foreign
correspondence’. The roll of past incumbents includes some illustrious names,
including Thomas Young, Joseph Lister and William Crookes. Over the years
the job has increased in complexity and importance. ‘I’ve been told that
it involves roughly two days a week and a fair amount of travelling – because
we have a lot of exchange agreements between the Royal Society and academies
in other countries,’ explains McLaren. When she takes up her duties she
will be supported by a full-time, paid staff of 36, divided into five sections,
each dealing with a different part of the world. avril

McLaren’s election as foreign secretary is a development of major importance.
‘It’s weird that there hasn’t been a woman before,’ she says, ‘but then
there aren’t all that many women Fellows of the Royal Society. Obviously,
there ought to be more and I’m sure there will be more in the future. That’s
the way things are going.’ Women were first admitted to the society in 1945,
yet today they account for only 3 per cent of its membership. The figure
has hovered at this level for the past 20 years, according to a recent survey
by Joan Mason of the Open University. In 1990, there were just 32 women
Fellows.

McLaren’s route to a scientific career was an unusual one. Her father
was Henry McLaren, the second Baron Aberconway, an industrialist and MP,
who was at one time parliamentary private secretary to David Lloyd George.
The baron had a penchant for open-topped Rolls-Royce cars. He was also a
keen horticulturalist who found a superb canvas for his art at the family’s
country seat at Bodnant, Gwynedd, now one of the country’s most celebrated
gardens. McLaren spent her holidays there as a child, but despite her father’s
interests, she was not initially inclined towards biological sciences.

Her decision to read zoology at Oxford was based on practical considerations.
‘I wanted to go to a university – which wasn’t the norm in my family – but
it was wartime anyway and everything was changing, and so that was accepted.
I was recommended to read English because I was good at writing essays.
I went along with that until I looked at the entrance exam papers and then
I discovered that to get into Oxford in English one would have had to have
read an awful lot of books – you know, Dickens, Shakespeare and stuff –
which I hadn’t. So I panicked then and went through the rest of the entrance
exam papers and decided that zoology looked the easiest. So that was what
I did, and I never regretted it.’

McLaren encountered a degree of flexibility quite absent from today’s
university admissions procedure. She was able to study zoology, physics
and maths at Oxford despite having had no formal training in physics and
a relatively small amount of instruction in biology. ‘The system is now
so much more rigid, because children have to decide when they’re thirteen
or fourteen what they’re going to do. Unless they do the right subjects
they can’t get into a university to read science, which seems very wrong,’
says McLaren. ‘I was very lucky.’

At Oxford, McLaren’s interest in genetics was kindled by the brilliant
lectures of E. B. Ford, who was for some time her tutor. ‘He made each lecture
like a sort of dramatic performance – riveting, absolutely riveting,’ she
recalls. Ford was notorious for a certain antipathy towards women students.
In one famous anecdote, related by Desmond Morris in Animal Days, Ford walked
into the lecture theatre only to find that his audience was entirely female.
‘As no one has turned up for my lecture today, it is cancelled,’ he declared.
‘I think I was his first woman pupil – and for all I know his last,’ laughs
McLaren.

After completing a doctorate in virology, McLaren took up genetics once
again in research work at University College London and the Royal Veterinary
College, before moving to Edinburgh in 1959. ‘My research interests have
always lain in the area where reproductive biology, developmental biology
and genetics overlap – and always with reference to mice,’ she says. Within
this broad field, she has worked on many topics that are now central to
modern biology. Her early research focused on the influence of the mother
on the development of the embryo, work that involved transferring embryos
from one animal to another. Later on she explored matters such as the control
of ovulation and the implantation of the embryo in the uterus.

McLaren also became very interested in techniques for culturing mouse
embryos in the laboratory. In 1958, with her colleague John Biggers, she
announced that mouse embryos cultured from an early stage and then introduced
to the womb of a foster mother had developed into healthy fertile adults.
It was important, pioneering work. ‘I guess some of the early work on embryo
transfer, ovulation and in vitro fertilisation was not irrelevant to the
later clinical work and also to agricultural advances,’ says McLaren.

Work on cultured embryos also made possible the study of chimeras, composite
embryos which contain cells from more than one fertilised egg. McLaren has
always been fascinated by the way genes interact with their environment
during development. Chimeras offered a unique opportunity to understand
that interaction. ‘That was why chimeras were such fun,’ she says. ‘In chimeras
you can get a cell of one genetic constitution which is developing in an
environment of cells of a contrasting genetic constitution and see how it’s
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The work proved extraordinarily fruitful, not only because it offered
fresh insights into development, but also because it opened up new areas
for research. When a chimera was formed between a male and a female embryo,
for example, it usually developed as a male. This strange state of affairs
aroused McLaren’s interest in the development of germ cells (eggs and sperm).
Among her discoveries was the remarkable finding that it is the environment
– testis or ovary – that determines whether germ cells will attempt to develop
as sperm or eggs, rather than their own chromosomal make-up.

Her attention also turned to sex determination: the processes by which
an embryo becomes male or female. Of particular importance was her work
on sex-reversed mice, mice that have two X chromosomes but develop as males
because one of their X chromosomes carries an all-important string of genes
from the Y chromosome. (Females are normally XX, males XY.) Her collaborative
work with Elizabeth Simpson and others at the Clinical Research Centre,
Harrow, helped to disprove the theory that a protein called the H-Y antigen,
produced only by males, was the prime mover behind maleness.

Many other interests developed along the way. In Edinburgh, for example,
McLaren got very interested in DNA hybridisation – that is, mixing strands
of DNA from related species in order to probe their genetic similarity.
With the advent of modern molecular techniques, the approach is now widely
practised, but at the time it was as challenging as it was pioneering. ‘I
am afraid that when any subject gets too difficult, I tend to leave it and
move on,’ she says disarmingly. ‘When it was clear that the DNA work actually
wasn’t going to answer the questions that I wanted to ask it, I left that.’

‘Breadth not depth,’ is how McLaren describes her own achievements:
‘I’ve rather hopped around.’ One could dispute her assessment of the depth,
but the breadth is certainly striking. McLaren’s current research includes
work on the development of germ cells and a new study on the basis of twinning.
She is clearly a scientist who still likes to do practical research when
time allows. ‘Nothing I like better,’ is her verdict, an enthusiasm which
is amply confirmed by our surroundings. (There is a rumour that she disguises
her voice when answering the telephone if she doesn’t want to be disturbed.)
Will her new duties at the Royal Society deprive her of time for research?
‘I have been involved in quite a lot of committees of various sorts in the
past and most of those I’m now giving up. So it won’t mean that I spend
very much less time in the lab.’ Another factor that helps her set time
aside for research is her unwillingness to take up undergraduate teaching.

‘In a way, committees and editorial work have been paying the debt I
owe to society, the debt that other people fulfil by their teaching responsibilities,’
she says. Last year, McLaren’s committee work took her to the centre of
the heated political debate about human embryology. The only practising
embryologist sitting on the Warnock Committee on Human Fertilisation and
Embryology, she was a persuasive advocate of regulated research in human
embryology – a policy the committee eventually recommended. She then served
on the Voluntary (later called Interim) Licensing Authority dealing with
human fertilisation and embryo research. Now she is a member of the new
statutory Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

Her committee work has given her much insight into the process by which
new technology gains the confidence of the public. In the case of embryology,
McLaren’s answer to public fears is a combination of information and education.
‘There is a lot less disquiet and anxiety now than there was ten years ago
– and a lot less in this country than in other countries – and I think that’s
largely because there’s been so much attention paid in this country to an
open public debate and provision of information,’ she says.

The work of the Voluntary Licensing Authority was another factor. ‘They
were responsible for listing, licensing and overseeing every centre in this
country that was doing either clinical or research work; every year they
published their annual report, where it was all listed, so people could
see exactly what was going on and where it was going on. Although there
were some problems, there were not very many and so the public realised
that doctors and scientists were actually very concerned to act responsibly.’

In 1985, McLaren was shocked by the level of debate in the House of
Commons on the Unborn Children (Protection) Bill introduced unsuccessfully
by Enoch Powell. ‘If you read the debate in Hansard – it’s appalling,’ she
says. Since then there has been a transformation of people’s understanding
and level of knowledge; a transformation that was apparent in Parliament
last year when the current legislation was debated. Along with other senior
figures, McLaren played no small part in the transformation. ‘We were all
working like Trojans and she certainly was doing as much as anyone, willing
to write articles and go and talk at meetings,’ says one researcher. She
also made her expertise available during the committee stage of the new
act. ‘She was on tap the whole time,’ says another colleague. ‘Without her
there, it may very well not have gone through.’

Her diplomatic skills will stand her in good stead as she takes up the
duties of foreign secretary. She has none of the haughtiness that people
with her intellectual powers sometimes adopt. ‘I don’t think I know of anybody
who doesn’t like her,’ says someone who has worked closely with her.

McLaren retires as director of the Mammalian Development Unit next year.
The unit, with its staff of 20, was set up around her in 1974 and will close
when she retires; all MRC units work in this way. The unit’s researchers
will then continue their work elsewhere. The closure must be a cause of
some sadness, but McLaren is philosophical. ‘The subject moves on,’ she
says. ‘In 1974 there was very little mammalian development going on in this
country or indeed anywhere, so we were in a sense pioneers. Now it’s going
on in lots of places on a large scale.’ Some of those centres have been
seeded by people who once worked at her unit. ‘The unit and what she’s done
have had a tremendous impact,’ says a former colleague. ‘We’ve all gone
and done our own things elsewhere,’ he adds. The Mammalian Development Unit,
you feel, has been a victim of its own success.

Stephen Young is a freelance science writer based in Wales

* * *

COMBINING PARENTHOOD WITH LIFE IN THE LABORATORY

What lies behind the manifest lack of women in senior positions in British
science? ‘Social problems – the lack of child care facilities and the difficulty
for women of combining family life and jobs,’ says Anne McLaren. ‘And then
of course there’s the cohort phenomenon: the women who should be the professors
and Fellows of the Royal Society now are from a generation back, as it were.
That was why it was so depressing to see that in the last ten years the
proportion of women FRSs hasn’t increased.’

In biology, argues McLaren, the imbalance is generated not at the undergraduate,
postgraduate or even postdoctoral level, but beyond, at the point when researchers
are having families. ‘The lack of child care facilities is an absolute disgrace
– comparing Britain with any other country in Europe,’ she says.

McLaren’s own experience adds special force to her views. She married
fellow scientist Donald Michie in 1952, the year in which she was awarded
her D. Phil, and went on to have three children while doing her postdoctoral
work. In 1959, she had her third child, was divorced and took up a new job
in the Agricultural Research Council’s Unit of Animal Genetics in Edinburgh
– a busy year by any standards.

‘In those days, one got by with au pair girls,’ she recalls. ‘In Edinburgh
I had a succession of very nice Norwegian 18-year-olds who wanted to come
and learn the language. I think the result was that my children all grew
up very independent.’

Combining work and parenthood was not an insuperable problem. ‘I think
I was very lucky because I was able to switch my mind from the one life
to the other while I think a lot of people would be worrying about their
children all the time when they were in the lab,’ says McLaren. ‘Which I
wasn’t,’ she adds, laughing.

Occasionally the two worlds of family and career would have to rub along
together. ‘All my colleagues were very supportive when I brought babies
into the lab and that sort of thing.’ Nowadays, she occasionally takes her
grandchildren to the laboratory when they are staying with her in London.

Has she ever faced discrimination? ‘No, I haven’t. But I know that I’ve
been extremely fortunate and I’ve certainly been aware of it in other situations,
particularly in America, where my colleagues and contemporaries found it
very difficult to get tenured jobs in universities. In this country I think
there was more discrimination in medical faculties than in biology.’

In other subjects, additional problems beset female scientists, problems
which may begin early on in their careers, even at school. ‘I think girls
are actively put off physics and chemistry,’ says McLaren. ‘They’re given
the impression they can’t do it and it’s a boys’ subject.’