Technology & Medicine › Digital age
In vitro fertilisation (IVF)
July 25, 1978 (Louise Brown)· Invention or discovery· Medicine & surgery
Well documentedSolid records, physical evidence or scientific consensus.
Fertilizing an egg with sperm in a laboratory dish, then placing the embryo in the uterus to start a pregnancy.
See it on the Technology & Medicine map →How it works
Physiologist Robert Edwards and gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe, with nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy, worked for a decade in Cambridge and Oldham, England. Eggs were collected by keyhole surgery, mixed with sperm in a dish ('in vitro' means 'in glass'), and the embryo returned to the womb days later. After many failures, Louise Brown was born at Oldham General Hospital on July 25, 1978. Britain's Medical Research Council had refused to fund the work.
Why it mattered
IVF made parenthood possible for millions facing infertility, and led to egg freezing, embryo genetic testing and debates over embryo research; over 12 million IVF babies have been born.
How we know
Steptoe and Edwards' 1978 letter in The Lancet, hospital records, Edwards' 2010 Nobel Prize, and fertility-registry counts from groups such as ICMART and ESHRE.
Still unknown or debated
Indian doctor Subhash Mukhopadhyay announced an IVF baby, Durga, in October 1978; dismissed then, he is now widely credited in India. Purdy's role was long overlooked.
Connections (2)
▸The contraceptive pill was followed in reproductive medicine by In vitro fertilisation (IVF)Mostly agreed
The connection
Both came out of the new science of reproductive hormones. John Rock, a Pill pioneer, had reported test-tube fertilization of human eggs with Miriam Menkin in 1944. IVF uses hormone drugs to ripen several eggs at once. Together the two gave people new control over when, and whether, to have children.
When and how
Rock's clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, from the 1940s to the 1950s; Steptoe and Edwards in Oldham and Cambridge, England, 1968–1978.
How sure are we?
The link is mostly thematic and personal: Rock's work spanned both, and histories of reproductive medicine place them in one line of hormone research.
Debates and open questions
Whether Rock and Menkin truly fertilized human eggs in 1944 is doubted today; the cells were never transferred, and the methods of the time could not confirm it.
▸Medical ultrasound guides egg collection in In vitro fertilisation (IVF)Well documented
The connection
Early IVF needed keyhole surgery under general anaesthetic to collect eggs. From the 1980s doctors instead used ultrasound to see the ovaries and guide a thin needle into each follicle, the fluid-filled sac holding an egg. Ultrasound also tracks follicle growth before collection and confirms early pregnancy afterwards.
When and how
First ultrasound-guided egg collection by Susan Lenz's team in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1981; vaginal-probe methods spread from the mid-1980s and are now standard.
How we know
Clinical papers from the 1980s and current IVF guidelines describe ultrasound-guided collection as routine, replacing keyhole surgery.
Debates and open questions
Little is debated; research continues on reducing the number of scans needed and on whether 3D ultrasound improves pregnancy rates.