29/09/2026
Do you know anyone who has been helped by human in vitro fertilisation (IVF) therapy?
Robert Edwards was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for the development of human in vitro fertilisation (IVF) therapy. His achievements made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity.
As early as the 1950s, Edwards had the vision that IVF could be useful as a treatment for infertility. He worked systematically to realise his goal, discovered important principles for human fertilisation, and succeeded in accomplishing fertilisation of human egg cells in test tubes (or more precisely, cell culture dishes).
His efforts were finally crowned by success on 25 July, 1978, when the world’s first “test tube baby” was born. During the following years, Edwards and his co-workers refined IVF technology and shared it with colleagues around the world.
Read more about Edwards' life-changing achievement: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2010/popular-information/
