Alan Trounson
The Modern Laboratory · People
The Modern Laboratory
Alan Trounson
A sheep scientist who brought farm-animal know-how to human IVF, and taught embryos to wait in the cold.
From sheep to people. Alan Osborne Trounson grew up in rural New South Wales. He studied wool technology at the University of New South Wales, taking a master's degree in 1971 on multiple births in sheep. His PhD at the University of Sydney in 1974 studied fertilised sheep eggs. At Cambridge from 1971 to 1976 he worked on the transfer and freezing of cattle embryos, skills he would later bring to human IVF.
Monash. In 1977 Carl Wood invited him to join the IVF team at Monash University in Melbourne. In 1981 the team reported in Science pregnancies from IVF in cycles where fertility drugs helped several eggs to mature at once. This made more embryos available, and raised a new question: what to do with the ones not transferred straight away.
Embryos that wait. With Linda Mohr he worked out how to freeze human embryos at the four and eight cell stages. In 1983 they reported in Nature the first pregnancy from a frozen and thawed human embryo. Sadly that pregnancy was lost at 24 weeks to an infection. The method worked, though, and in March 1984 Zoe Leyland was born in Melbourne, the first baby from a frozen embryo. The same year the team reported in Nature a pregnancy using a donated egg in a woman whose ovaries had failed.
A teacher and a leader. He became Director of the Centre for Early Human Development at Monash in 1986 and led the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development from 1990 to 2003. Many younger scientists trained or worked with him, among them David Gardner and Denny Sakkas. From the mid 1990s he turned to stem cells. In 2000 his group, with colleagues in Singapore, reported human embryonic stem cell lines grown from blastocysts. From 2007 to 2014 he was President of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Honours. In 2021 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to medical science, and to IVF and stem cell technologies. He is Emeritus Professor at Monash University and a Distinguished Scientist at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research.
Room 2, One sperm, one egg, Room 3, Growing in the dish, Room 6, Waiting safely
Also see: Linda Mohr, David Gardner, Denny Sakkas, Michelle Lane
About the sources
- Hudson Institute of Medical Research: Emeritus Professor Alan Trounson, biography (hudson.org.au): IVF pioneer 1977 to 1996; Director, Centre for Early Human Development, 1986; Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development 1990 to 2003; CIRM 2007 to 2014.
- Society for Reproductive Biology, Fellow biography: Alan Trounson (srb.org.au/alan-trounson).
- UNSW Newsroom, June 2021: “Six UNSW alumni tapped with Queen’s Birthday Honours” (AO citation).
- Wikipedia: Alan Trounson, and Wikidata Q4707442 (birth date 16 February 1946, referenced to SNAC), consulted October 2026, for early life, degrees and Cambridge years.
- Reubinoff BE, Pera MF, Fong CY, Trounson A, Bongso A. Embryonic stem cell lines from human blastocysts: somatic differentiation in vitro. Nature Biotechnology 2000;18(4):399–404.
- Downing BG, Mohr LR, Trounson AO, Freemann LE, Wood C. Birth after transfer of cryopreserved embryos. Medical Journal of Australia 1985;142(7):409–411.
- Lutjen P, Trounson A, Leeton J, Findlay J, Wood C, Renou P. The establishment and maintenance of pregnancy using in vitro fertilization and embryo donation in a patient with primary ovarian failure. Nature 1984;307(5947):174–175.
- Trounson A, Mohr L. Human pregnancy following cryopreservation, thawing and transfer of an eight-cell embryo. Nature 1983;305(5936):707–709.
- Trounson AO, Leeton JF, Wood C, Webb J, Wood J. Pregnancies in humans by fertilization in vitro and embryo transfer in the controlled ovulatory cycle. Science 1981;212(4495):681–682.
- Room 6 of this wing (birth of Zoe Leyland, 28 March 1984).
The IVF Museum · The Modern Laboratory · People
Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
