Robert Winston
The Modern Laboratory · People
The Modern Laboratory
Robert Winston
A surgeon of the fallopian tube, he built the Hammersmith fertility team where embryos were first tested for inherited disease.
From the theatre to the clinic. Robert Winston was born in London in 1940 and graduated in medicine from the London Hospital Medical College in 1964. For a short time he left medicine to direct theatre, and in 1969 he won a national directors' award at the Edinburgh Festival. By 1970 he had joined Hammersmith Hospital in London, which would be his scientific home for decades.
Mending the tubes. Many women in the 1970s could not conceive because their fallopian tubes were blocked or damaged. Winston worked to repair them with microsurgery, using an operating microscope and very fine instruments, and to reverse earlier sterilisation. In 1980 he reviewed this work in a paper titled “Microsurgery of the fallopian tube: from fantasy to reality”.
Leading a team. As Professor of Fertility Studies at Hammersmith he led the clinical side of a fertility team that also included scientists. In 1989 he was an author, with Kate Hardy and Alan Handyside, of the study that counted the cells of human blastocysts grown in culture. In 1990 the same team reported in Nature the first pregnancies after genetic testing of embryos, for couples at risk of serious conditions that affect boys. In 1992 they reported the birth of a healthy girl after embryo testing for cystic fibrosis.
Explaining science. He has written more than 300 scientific papers. He also became one of Britain's best known science broadcasters, presenting television series on medicine, twins and childhood. In 1995 he was made a life peer as Lord Winston and joined the House of Lords, where he sits on its Science and Technology Committee. He is Professor of Science and Society at Imperial College London, and a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
Room 4, Day five, Room 5, Testing an embryo
Also see: Alan Handyside, Kate Hardy, Henry Leese
About the sources
- UK Parliament. Lord Winston: parliamentary career (joined House of Lords 18 December 1995; Science and Technology Committee). members.parliament.uk/member/1770, checked 7 October 2026.
- Imperial College London. Professor Lord Robert Winston, Professor of Science and Society: staff profile (FMedSci, FREng, FRCOG). profiles.imperial.ac.uk/r.winston, checked 7 October 2026.
- Weizmann Institute of Science, Scientific Council. Honorary PhD citation: Lord Robert Winston (born London 1940; medical graduation 1964; Edinburgh Festival award 1969; Hammersmith by 1970; Professor of Fertility Studies; more than 300 publications; Baron Winston 1995).
- Wikipedia. Robert Winston, Baron Winston (used for leads only; facts checked against the pages above).
- Handyside AH, Lesko JG, Tarín JJ, Winston RM, Hughes MR. Birth of a normal girl after in vitro fertilization and preimplantation diagnostic testing for cystic fibrosis. New England Journal of Medicine 1992;327(13):905–909. PubMed 1381054.
- Handyside AH, Kontogianni EH, Hardy K, Winston RM. Pregnancies from biopsied human preimplantation embryos sexed by Y-specific DNA amplification. Nature 1990;344(6268):768–770. PubMed 2330030.
- Hardy K, Handyside AH, Winston RM. The human blastocyst: cell number, death and allocation during late preimplantation development in vitro. Development 1989;107(3):597–604. PubMed 2612378.
- Winston RM. Microsurgery of the fallopian tube: from fantasy to reality. Fertility and Sterility 1980;34(6):521–530. PubMed 7004914.
- Winston RM. Reversal of tubal sterilization. Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology 1980;23(4):1261–1268. PubMed 7449204.
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Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
