British test-tube baby pioneer Robert G. Edwards was on Monday awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. His pioneering work had led to the birth of the world’s first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978.
Prof. Edwards, 85, a pensioner fellow at Churchill College and emeritus professor of human reproduction at Cambridge Unive-rsity, was honoured with the Nobel Prize “for the development of in vitro fertilisation.” The Nobel committee said in its citation that he had to “battle societal and establishment resistance to his development of the in vitro fertilisation procedure, which has so far led to the birth of around four million people.”
Prof. Edwards began work on fertilisation in 1955, and began his partnership with Dr Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecologist surgeon, in 1968. The two developed IVF technology in which egg cells are fertilised outside the body and implanted in the womb. They founded the world’s first IVF clinic in 1980. Steptoe died in 1988 and was not included in the award, which is not given posthumously.