Jay McLean

Born in San Francisco in 1890, he was the son of a physician, John T. McLean. Following education at Lowell High School, he entered the University of California at Berkeley in 1909, obtaining his Bachelor of Science degree in 1914.[1]

McLean entered Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1915 where he met and began work with physiologist William Henry Howell. In 1916, when McLean was a second-year medical student, he was investigating pro-coagulant compounds when he first isolated a fat-soluble phosphatide anti-coagulant.[2] This anti-coagulant was first isolated from the liver tissue of canines, which is how Heparin got its name(hepar or "ήπαρ" is Greek for "liver"; hepar + -in), first coined in 1918.[3] Following the departure of McLean, Howell continued his work and with the assistance of T. Emmett Holt he isolated a water-soluble polysaccharide anticoagulant.[4] Howell also coined 'heparin' as the name of this compound despite being different from the compound previously discovered by McLean.[5]

McLean graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1919 and began an internship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.[4] Following completion of his internship, he began a surgical residency, in which he rotated through the Hunterian Laboratory, the laboratory founded by Harvey Cushing in 1904.[6]

McLean stayed in Baltimore until 1924 when returned to his alma-mater, the University of California to become an instructor in surgery.[4] After three years in California, McLean took a position in the Department of Pathology at Cornell University, a position which he held until 1939.[4] After leaving Cornell, McLean moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he worked in private surgical practice and was appointed as an associate professor of surgery at Ohio State medical school.[4] In 1949, he was appointed director of Radiation Therapy and Consultant in Malignant Diseases in Savannah, Georgia, where he remained until his death in 1957, aged 67 years.[4]