The Founding Papers · FP·01 · 1969

1969: The first human eggs fertilised in a dish

In February 1969 three men in Cambridge and Oldham told the world they had watched human sperm enter human eggs outside the body. The age of IVF had begun.

The story

For decades scientists had tried to fertilise a human egg in the laboratory. Some had claimed it. None had convinced their colleagues. Robert Edwards spent years learning how to ripen human eggs in a dish, and in this short paper in Nature he showed that sperm could fertilise them.

Two co-authors stood beside him. Barry Bavister was a young graduate student whose culture fluid had worked for hamster eggs. Patrick Steptoe was a surgeon in Oldham, in the north of England. It was the first time the two names that would become famous appeared together.

Not everyone believed it. Three weeks later Nature printed a letter headed “Did Fertilization Occur?”. The three authors replied on the same page. The field came to accept their work as the first true account of human fertilisation in vitro.

“Human oocytes have been matured and fertilized by spermatozoa in vitro. There may be certain clinical and scientific uses for human eggs fertilized by this procedure.”The paper's summary