At the start of the interview Dame Anne McLaren, pioneering embryologist, talks about her childhood in London and Bodnant, Wales, her immediate family and distinguished relations. She then outlines her education at Longstow Hall, Cambridgeshire and her decision to go to university. Initially she wanted to study English literature at Oxford, but found the entrance papers too demanding and decided on zoology instead. After two term's intensive preparation in Oxford she gained a scholarship and was accepted into Lady Margaret Hall. Next, Dame McLaren reflects on her undergraduate years at Oxford. She describes her four-year course, and notes the influence of a number of lecturers including the zoologists Alister Hardy and Willy Holmes. However, it was the geneticist EB Ford - her tutor - whom she found particularly inspiring, and she became interested in genetics and evolution. The interview moves on to Dame McLaren's postgraduate research after 1949. She became the first female Christopher Welch scholar after conducting a mini-research project in JBS Haldane's laboratory at University College, London on the infestation of Drosophila with mites. This and funding from the MRC enabled her to do a DPhil. After a false start working on inheritance of acquired characteristics in rabbits, supervised by Peter Medawar (there were not enough rabbits to continue with experiments), she worked under Kingsley Sanders on neurotropic viruses in the mouse. The interview ends with Dame McLaren discussing her marriage to Donald Michie after they both submitted their DPhils in 1952, and the two of them gaining a grant from the Agricultural Research Committee to work with Peter Medawar at UCL.
Bodnant; Duncan McLaren (second Baron Aberconway); Henry Pochin; Longstow Hall; Lady Margaret Hall; zoology at Oxford University; Alister Hardy; EB Ford; JBS Haldane; Peter Medawar; Drosophila; evolution and inheritance of acquired characteristics; Kingsley Sanders; neurotropic viruses in mice; Donald Michie. Donald Michie; University College, London; Royal Veterinary College; lumbar vertebrae maternal effect; embryo transfer; John Biggers; Bob Edwards; ethics and reproductive technology; superovulation and superpregnancy; Institute of Animal Genetics, Edinburgh; Conrad Hal Waddington; immunocontraception; DNA hybridisation; chimeras; Hans Grüneberg.
Embryology, Genetics, Allergy and immunology,
vid-141, MSVA_188
Permanent link to this resource: https://doi.org/10.24384/000022
McLaren, AnneBlythe, Max
Learning Resources
Original artefact: 1998 RADAR resource: 2017
Oxford, UK
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