Robert Edwards (geneticist)

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Sir Robert Geoffrey Edwards , CBE , FRS (born September 27, 1925 in Batley , England - † April 10, 2013 near Cambridge ) was a British geneticist and pioneer in the field of reproductive medicine . Together with the British gynecologist Patrick Steptoe , Edwards developed in vitro fertilization , for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010 .

Life

Robert Edwards - son of Samuel and Margaret Edwards - served in the British Army after attending Manchester High School during World War II . He then studied from 1948 to 1951 agriculture and zoology at the University of Wales, Bangor , and from 1951 to 1957 genetics at the University of Edinburgh . In 1955 he received his doctorate.

Bourn Hall Clinic

Immediately after graduation, he worked for a year as a research fellow at the California Institute of Technology . In 1958, Edwards became a member of the National Institute of Medical Research in England. In 1962 he moved first to the University of Glasgow and then in 1963 to the University of Cambridge . In 1965 he completed an academic guest stay at Johns Hopkins University and in 1966 at the University of North Carolina . Upon his return, Edwards taught physiology at Cambridge University. After a year of science at the Free University of Brussels, Edwards was appointed professor of reproductive medicine in Cambridge in 1985, which he held until 1989.

In 1980 Robert Edwards and colleague Patrick Steptoe founded the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridgeshire .

He was married to Ruth Edwards and had five daughters.

Services

As early as 1960 Edwards was considering creating an embryo in a test tube ( in vitro ): A gynecologist provided him with egg cells and parts of ovaries for experiments. Edwards first tried to fertilize the eggs with his sperm and then to cultivate them further.

From 1968 Edwards worked with the gynecologist Patrick Steptoe. In order to obtain further material, they asked women who were about to have a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) to have sexual intercourse with their husbands beforehand . In this way, they hoped to obtain sperm that had entered the female reproductive tract. From an ethical point of view, the approach of the two doctors was worth discussing. Edwards defended himself by saying that he respected the right of his patients to be able to start a family.

Between 1972 and 1974, embryos were first transferred to their mothers, but there were no pregnancies . In 1976, Edwards and Steptoe achieved an ectopic pregnancy for the first time . The first artificial insemination of a woman was achieved in 1977 : on July 25, 1978, the daughter Louise Joy Brown was delivered by cesarean section to her mother Lesley Brown . At that time, four other women were pregnant, but only a second healthy baby could be born in 1979.

Edwards was the first to try to cryopreserve excess embryos . When transported to London , however, only a few survived the transport and the rest did not survive the freezing. Edwards then constructed his own preservation device.

Awards

Publications

  • A matter of life. How the first "Test Tube Baby" was Conceived and Born. Together with Patrick Steptoe. Morrow, New York 1980.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ nobelprize.org. Retrieved October 4, 2010 .
  2. ↑ PC Steptoe, RG Edwards: Reimplantation of a human embryo with subsequent tubal pregnancy. In: Lancet. Volume 1, Number 7965, April 1976, pp. 880-882, ISSN  0140-6736 . PMID 58146 .
  3. ↑ PC Steptoe, RG Edwards: Birth after the reimplantation of a human embryo. In: Lancet. Volume 2, number 8085, August 1978, p. 366, ISSN  0140-6736 . PMID 79723 .

Web links

Pictures & life data (career, degrees, honors, more detailed than in the article)

personal data
SURNAME Edwards, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Edwards, Robert Geoffrey
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physiologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Batley , England
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 2013
Place of death at Cambridge