(Contributed by Professor Angus Stuart and Professor Dugald Gardner)
Neil MacLean (1911-2008) planned to be a paediatrician and obtained his MRCP ED. by examination but suffered severe hearing loss during the Second World War and embarked on a career in pathology. Dr MacLean's manual skills were outstanding, his opinion on liver disease much sought after.
In 1952, a University of Edinburgh lectureship in the Pathology Department enabled studies with R.F.Ogilvie of the diabetic pancreas. A move to the Western General Hospital, first as SHMO (1958) then as a consultant (1963), provided the opportunity for original work in cytogenetics.
With Court Brown and others, McLean published a 1964 MRC Memorandum Abnormalities of the sex chromosome complement in man as well as Lancet papers on sex chromosome abnormalities in the newborn and in psychiatric patients.
After retiring Dr. MacLean gave much time to the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and prepared numerous illustrations for A Coloured Atlas of Demonstrations in Surgical Pathology (1983, 1986).
Of Dr MacLean it can be said Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. In his later years he lived with his sister Eva, formerly Head Mistress of St. Margaret's School. Neil and Eva spent their summers in Tiree and it is there that he is buried beside her.