Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/McClean, Frank
McCLEAN, FRANK (1837–1904), civil engineer and amateur astronomer, born at Glasgow on 13 Nov. 1837, was only son of John Robinson McClean, M.P., F.R.S., a civil engineer of repute, who besides receiving many commissions from the British government, carried out works in Paris for Emperor Napoleon III, and was one of the engineers invited by the Viceroy of Egypt to report upon the Suez Canal. His mother was Anna, daughter of William Newsam. On 18 Jan. 1850 Frank was admitted to Westminster school as a 'home-boarder,' his family living in the neighbourhood. From Westminster he passed in 1853 to the university of Glasgow, and thence in 1855 to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a scholarship and graduated as twenty-seventh wrangler in 1859. In the same year he was articled to Sir John Hawkshaw [q. v. Suppl. I], the engineer, and in 1862 was made a partner in his father's engineering firm of McClean and Stileman. For four years he was resident engineer of the Barrow docks and of the Furness and Midland railway, and other work of the firm fell to his control, but in 1870 he withdrew from his profession in the enjoyment of a large income. Thenceforth he divided his time between a town residence in South Kensington and a country house near Tunbridge Wells. On his retirement McClean occupied himself with natural science and with the collection of illuminated manuscripts, early printed books, ancient coins, enamels, and ivories. In order to perfect his collections he studied foreign languages and visited the museums and galleries of the Continent.
His scientific interest at first inclined to electrical work, but he soon turned to astronomy, and in 1875 he completed an observatory at his country house at Ferncliffe, near Tunbridge Wells, where he devoted himself to astronomical spectroscopy. A star spectroscope designed by him and named after him still figures in instrument makers' catalogues. In 1884, when he built a new country residence at Rusthall, he arranged a laboratory there, and an ingenious apparatus comprising a heliostat for spectroscopic observation of the sun. He described his first results in papers contributed to the Royal Astronomical Society (1887–91).
In 1895 McClean began astronomical spectroscopic work of another kind, and with a telescope of 13 inches aperture made by Sir Howard Grubb, with a prism placed in front of the object-glass, he began a systematic survey of the spectra of all the stars brighter than magnitude 3½ in the northern heavens. This was completed in 1896, and in 1897 McClean at the invitation of Sir David Gill took the prism to the Cape of Good Hope Observatory, and having mounted it on a similar telescope belonging to that observatory, extended his survey to the whole sky. The account of the northern survey is published in the 'Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society' (vol. cxci.) and of the southern in a quarto volume, 'Spectra of Southern Stars' (1898). For this work he received the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1899. It was characteristic of McClean that he did with his own hand the routine photography which his astronomical work entailed, instead of leaving it to an assistant.
McClean generously employed his ample fortune in the advancement of astronomy. In 1894 he presented to the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope a photographic telescope of 24 inches aperture, with a twin visual telescope of 18 inches aperture having a slit spectroscope and an object-glass prism attached. This instrument, called the Victoria telescope, is housed at McClean's expense in an excellent dome with a rising floor. A still more munificent gift was the foundation, at a cost of 12,500l., of the Isaac Newton studentships in the university of Cambridge for the encouragement of study and research in astronomy and physical optics. This foundation has proved eminently successful. In 1911 five important government positions in astronomy were filled by former Isaac Newton students.
McClean joined the Royal Astronomical Society in 1877, and served on the council from 1891 until his death. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the university of Glasgow in 1894. He was elected F.R.S. m 1895. He died at Brussels, from pneumonia, on 8 Nov. 1904, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. He bequeathed his collection of illuminated manuscripts and early printed books and a large part of his art treasures to the FitzWilliam Museum at Cambridge, and made large money bequests to that university, to the university of Birmingham, to the Royal Institution, and to the Royal Astronomical Society for furthering astronomical and physical science. In 1865 he married Ellen, daughter of John Greg of Escowbeck, Lancaster, and by her had two daughters and three sons. The youngest, Frank Kennedy McClean, is an observing astronomer and an aviator.
[Proc. Roy. Soc. vol. lxxviii.; Roy. Astron. See. Monthly Notices, Feb. 1905, vol. lxv.]