[1] 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.

[2] 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.

[1] During World War I she worked at the Admiralty in areas such as gas warfare and the large-scale production of acetone by fermentation.

[2] Between 1920 and 1941 Maclean published in the Biochemical Journal approximately thirty papers, many in collaboration, on her particular interests, namely the role of fatty acids in animals and the synthesis of fats from carbohydrates.

Having been made a fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry in 1918, in 1920 she became the first woman to be formally admitted to the London Chemical Society.