Wallace W. McLean ’41

Wally McLean, a pioneer in electronics cooling, died Jan. 15, 1995, in his childhood home in Scarsdale. He and his wife, Marie Hedman, who survives, had lived in Princeton for many years. His father was in the Class of 1896.

Mac entered Princeton with the Class of  '40 from Lawrenceville and roomed with George Haas, Dave Kirkpatrick, and Henry Morgan. He majored in electrical engineering, and joined Terrace, sang in the choir, and was a whiz on the piano (both classical and boogie-woogie). An illness senior year put him back, officially, into our class.

A genius, Wally founded McLean Engineering Laboratories in a loft on Nassau St. while still an undergrad. In 1953, he built a plant for his company in Princeton Junction, which grew to well over 100 employees and built cooling devices for nearly every NASA project. He created McLean Midwest in Minnesota in 1970, and built a plant in upstate New York that made precision electric motors. In 1982, he sold the company to Zero Corp., which has sensibly kept the McLean tradename.

Survivors include his widow; a son, Wallace Donald II; a daughter, Margaret Linwood Livingston; stepdaughters Mary Ann Gomez and Susan Maria Jackson; and three grandchildren. The mother of his sons, Jean Stewart Sadder, died in 1963.We mourn the passing of a unique gentleman.