The IVF Museum · Pioneers · Miriam Menkin

Miriam Menkin

1901 to 1992 · Boston

The patient laboratory scientist whose work with John Rock produced the first reported fertilisation of human eggs in a dish.

Miriam Menkin trained in biology at Cornell and in genetics at Columbia, and hoped to become a physician. Money and family circumstances kept her from going to medical school or completing a doctorate, and for most of her career she worked as a laboratory scientist on other people's projects. Before joining John Rock she worked with Gregory Pincus at Harvard, whose rabbit experiments were then raising the question of whether mammalian eggs could be fertilised outside the body.

From about 1938 Menkin ran the egg and fertilisation side of Rock's project at the Free Hospital for Women in Brookline, Massachusetts. Eggs were recovered from ovarian tissue removed during surgery just before ovulation was expected, cultured, and exposed to sperm. Their report records that nearly 800 eggs were recovered during the work, and 138 were studied after exposure to sperm. Week after week, the eggs failed to divide.

In February 1944, after changes to the method that included a longer exposure to washed sperm, she saw cleavage. Rock and Menkin reported three successful experiments in Science on 4 August 1944: two eggs had divided into two cells, and one into three. It was the first published report of human eggs fertilised and dividing in a dish. Menkin was first author of the fuller account, published in 1948.

By today's standards it cannot be proved that those eggs were truly fertilised. What is certain is that her care at the bench produced the first documented human embryos in culture, more than thirty years before Louise Brown. In later years she worked with Rock on contraception and the menstrual cycle, and photographs and papers she gave are now among the John Rock papers at Harvard's Countway Library.

As a result of recent modifications of our method, we believe we have succeeded in three experiments.John Rock and Miriam Menkin, Science 1944

Life and work

• Cornell University, undergraduate degree; Columbia University, MA in genetics
• Laboratory technician with Gregory Pincus, Harvard
• Research with John Rock, Free Hospital for Women, Brookline, from about 1938
• Returned to Rock's laboratory around 1950 to work on contraception and the menstrual cycle

Key papers

1. Rock J, Menkin MF. In vitro fertilization and cleavage of human ovarian eggs. Science 1944;100:105 to 107. ReadThe first published report of human eggs fertilised and dividing in vitro, as the authors believed.
2. Menkin MF, Rock J. In vitro fertilization and cleavage of human ovarian eggs. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 1948;55:440 to 452. ReadThe fuller account, with Menkin as first author.
3. Rock J, Menkin MF. Stilbestrol. New England Journal of Medicine 1942;227:552 to 556. Read
4. Hertig AT, Rock J, Adams EC, Menkin MC. Thirty-four fertilized human ova, good, bad and indifferent, recovered from 210 women of known fertility: a study of biologic wastage in early human pregnancy. Pediatrics 1959;23:202 to 211. Read

See also John Rock and the Pioneers wing.

The IVF Museum · Pioneers · Miriam Menkin
Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Undergoing peer review. Corrections are warmly welcomed.