The Founding Papers · FP·04 · 1978
1978: Louise Brown is born
On 25 July 1978 a baby girl was born in Oldham. Eighteen days later, a single page in The Lancet told the world how she had begun.
The story
After ten years of work, hundreds of hopeful women and many disappointments, Lesley Brown's daughter Louise was born at Oldham and District General Hospital. She was the first person ever born from an embryo created outside the body.
Steptoe and Edwards announced it in a letter of just one page. The full method would follow two years later. The world's most famous IVF document is also one of its shortest.
Jean Purdy is not named on this letter, though she is named on the papers before and after it. The museum tells her story in full on her own page.
“We wish to report that one of our patients, a 30-year-old nulliparous married woman, was safely delivered by caesarean section on July 25, 1978, of a normal healthy infant girl weighing 2700 g.”Steptoe and Edwards, 12 August 1978
The paper
Birth after the Reimplantation of a Human Embryo
Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards
The Lancet 1978;2(8085):366. Published 12 August 1978. One page. Read the paper.
How we know
Citation from PubMed and Crossref, read 6 October 2026. The journal could not be opened for this rebuild.
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