Scholarship boy who pioneered in-vitro fertilisation

On Wednesday Prof Sir Robert Edwards, CBE, FRS, Nobel laureate, and one of the pioneers of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 87.

Robert (Bob) Edwards was born in 1925 into a poor working-class family in Batley, near Leeds, Yorkshire. His secondary education through a scholarship was in Manchester, after which he served in the British army in the Middle East. He was awarded his BSc from the University of Bangor in Wales and studied at the Institute of Animal Genetics and Embryology at Edinburgh University, where he took a doctorate in genetics in 1955.

He spent time as a research fellow at the California Institute of Technology, and the National Institute for Medical Research. In 1963, after a year at Glasgow University, he moved to Cambridge University as Ford Foundation Research Fellow at the Department of Physiology, and a member of Churchill College.

Laying the groundwork
In the early 1960s, Edwards started to study human fertilisation and he continued his work at Cambridge, laying the groundwork for his later success. In 1968 he was able to achieve fertilisation of a human egg in the laboratory and started to collaborate with Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecological surgeon from Oldham.

Edwards developed human culture media to allow the fertilisation and early embryo culture, while Steptoe used laparoscopy to recover fresh oocytes from patients with tubal infertility.

Edwards, with Patrick Steptoe and nurse Jane Purdy, successfully pioneered IVF and ultimately the birth of the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, born on July 25th, 1978.

Their attempts were controversial and met significant hostility and opposition. Steptoe and Edwards were faced with scores of people claiming things like “they were playing God” and that “any babies produced would not have a soul”. IVF is now generally accepted worldwide.

He was a gentle, gentleman in every sense of the word, and impressively humble about his achievements. His genius and pioneering work has significantly contributed to almost five million babies born through IVF, positively influenced the lives of many millions of people.

Modern human fertility treatment and the profession of clinical human embryology exists largely because of the work of this prescient scientist who had the drive, passion and intelligence to push it. Over the six decades of his scientific career, he never lost his enthusiasm for research, knowledge and its dissemination and the association of Irish Clinical Embryologists is very proud to be associated with his legacy.

He talked about his fondness for Ireland and how he might like to set up a sheep farm in Wicklow. He never did.

Irish scientists
He encouraged and inspired young embryologists, including many Irish scientists, to pursue their career and research in the field of human reproduction. In later years, as editor of what he liked to call "his journal", Reproductive BioMedicine Online , he worked to promote the efficient communication of research.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in October 2010 and was praised by the Nobel committee for advancing the treatment of infertility. It was regarded as long overdue by his peers as well as those working in the field of asssisted human reproduction and the millions who found the happiness of a baby through his pioneering work.

In the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, he was knighted for his services to the field of human reproductive biology. Both honours came too late as he was already ill and could not travel to receive them.

He is survived by his wife Ruth, five daughters and 12 grandchildren.