Abstract
After graduation at the University of Manchester, Dr. MacLean (then Miss Ida Smedley) worked on certain problems in pure organic chemistry under Prof. H. E. Armstrong, investigating inter alia the cause of colour in the dinitrobenzenes. She also acted as demonstrator in chemistry and carried out researches on problems concerning the increase in molecular refractivity of compounds containing a conjugated ethenoid linkage structure. This work resulted in a very interesting communication on the diphenylbutadienes and hexatrienes published in the Journal of the Chemical Society of 1908. Shortly after this early work, Miss Smedley was awarded a Beit Memorial Research Fellowship and went to work in the Biochemical Laboratories of the Lister Institute under Arthur Harden, chemist-in-chief. These laboratories had just been constituted by amalgamation of the Laboratories for Pathological Chemistry under J. B. Leathes (later of Toronto and Sheffield), with the Chemical Laboratory under Harden. One must suppose that about this time Miss Smedley developed that intense and lifelong interest in problems of fat metabolism. Study of fat metabolism and fat synthesis had already been actively pursued at the Institute by J. B. Leathes and the school he there established. It was, however, a field in which few then delved. Dr. Hugh MacLean, who later took a great interest in the study of the lipins, arrived at the Institute as one of Harden's assistants about the same time as Miss Smedley, and their marriage took place in 1913.
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NUNN, L. Dr. Ida Smedley-MacLean. Nature 154, 110 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/154110b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/154110b0