Edwards, Robert Geoffrey (1925-2013), an English biologist, was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. He won the prize for his work in developing in vitro fertilization (IVF) in humans. IVF is the combining of an egg cell with a sperm cell in a laboratory to produce an embryo. Doctors then transfer the embryo to a woman’s uterus (womb). There it can develop into a fetus and, eventually, a baby. IVF is widely used to treat infertility. Infertility is the inability of a man and a woman to produce children together.
Edwards conducted research on IVF beginning in the 1950’s. In 1971, he and the English researcher Patrick Steptoe reported the first account of an embryo that had been fertilized in a glass dish. Seven years later, Edwards and Steptoe pioneered the world’s first IVF birth. The first IVF baby, Louise Brown, was born in Oldham, England, in 1978. Since then, millions of babies have been born using IVF.
Robert Geoffrey Edwards was born on Sept. 27, 1925, in Manchester, England. He studied biology at the University of Bangor in Wales and received a Ph.D. in biology at Edinburgh University in Scotland in 1955. From 1958 to 1963, Edwards was a research scientist at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. In 1963, he joined the faculty at University of Cambridge. Edwards and Steptoe founded the Bourn Hall Clinic for IVF research at Cambridge in 1980. Edwards died on April 10, 2013.
