A new wing

The Modern Laboratory

Follow one embryo through an IVF laboratory today, and meet the people who made each step possible.

Louise Brown's birth in 1978 was the beginning, not the end. In the years that followed, scientists around the world solved one problem after another, until IVF became the gentle, reliable treatment it is today. This wing tells their stories in the order an embryo meets them.

1. Room 1The egg is collectedHow a hormone gathered from urine, a husband and wife in Virginia, and a needle guided by sound brought the egg gently into the laboratory.Bruno Lunenfeld · Howard and Georgeanna Jones · Suzan Lenz · Pierre Dellenbach · Wilfried Feichtinger
2. Room 2One sperm, one eggHow a single sperm, placed gently inside an egg, brought hope to millions of couples.Ryuzo Yanagimachi · Gianpiero Palermo · André Van Steirteghem · Paul Devroey · Denny Sakkas
3. Room 3Growing in the dishA teacher and his student, and how they learned what a young embryo needs to thrive.Henry Leese · David Gardner · Michelle Lane · William Schoolcraft
4. Room 4Day fiveOur embryo becomes a blastocyst, and we meet the people who first helped it get there in a dish.Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy · Kate Hardy · Virginia Bolton · Yves Ménézo
5. Room 5Testing an embryoHow patient hands learned to take a few cells from an embryo, and gave families with serious inherited conditions new hope.Jacques Cohen · Alan Handyside · Robert Winston · Yury Verlinsky · Santiago Munné
6. Room 6Waiting safelyHow scientists learned to pause a life at minus 196°C, and to wake it again.Alan Trounson and Linda Mohr · Christopher Chen · Gábor Vajta · Masashige Kuwayama · Zsolt Peter Nagy
7. Room 7One at a timeHow teams in Finland, Belgium and Sweden showed that one good embryo, chosen with care, is often all a family needs.Aila Tiitinen and the Helsinki team · Jan Gerris · Christina Bergh
8. Room 8Watching it growThe scientists who learned to film an embryo's first days, and what those quiet films have taught us.Connie Wong and Renee Reijo Pera · Marcos Meseguer · Kirstine Kirkegaard

Begin the journey in Room 1