Ida Maclean

Ida Smedley Maclean
Ida Maclean-Smedley (1933)
Born	Ida Smedley 14 June 1877 Birmingham, England
Died	March 2, 1944(1944-03-02) (aged 66) London
Nationality	English
Fields	Biochemistry
Known for	First woman admitted to the London Chemical Society

Ida Smedley Maclean (born Ida Smedley 14 June 1877, died 2 March 1944) was an English biochemist and the first woman admitted to the London Chemical Society.

Ida was born in Birmingham to William Smedley, a businessman, and Annie Elizabeth Duckworth. She was taught by her mother at home until the age of nine and lived in "a cultured and progressive home". She was educated at King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham from 1886 to 1896, when she won a scholarship and began her studies at Newnham College, Cambridge. In the university's Natural Sciences Tripos she got a first class in part one and a second class in part two, studying chemistry and physiology. After a two-year break, holding a Bathurst scholarship, in 1901 she undertook postgraduate research at the Central Technical College in London and later at the Royal Institution's Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory. The University of London awarded her a D.Sc. in 1905.

In 1906 Maclean became an assistant lecturer in at the chemistry department of Manchester University, the department's first female staff member. She taught there until 1910, as well as acting as a demonstrator in the women students' laboratories and researching the optical properties of organic compounds. In 1910, supported by one of the first Beit fellowships, she began her work in biochemistry at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, receiving the American Association of University Women's Ellen Richards prize for her research. She married Hugh Maclean, a co-worker at the Lister Institute, on 28 March 1913; the couple had a son and a daughter. During World War I she worked at the Admiralty in areas such as gas warfare and the large-scale production of acetone by fermentation.