The Founding Papers · FP·07 · 1983
1983: Melbourne freezes an embryo
In Melbourne, Alan Trounson and Linda Mohr froze an eight-cell embryo for four months, thawed it, and achieved a pregnancy.
The story
Freezing embryos would one day allow a single treatment to give many chances of a baby. At Monash University and the Queen Victoria Medical Centre, Trounson and Mohr found a way to freeze four- and eight-cell embryos so that most of them survived.
Sadly, this first pregnancy was lost at 24 weeks to an infection. But the method worked. Five months later, in the same hospital, Zoe Leyland was born, described by Monash at the time as the first authenticated birth from a frozen embryo.
“the establishment of a pregnancy following the freezing and storage of an eight-cell embryo for 4 months in liquid nitrogen.”From the paper's abstract
The paper
Human Pregnancy following Cryopreservation, Thawing and Transfer of an Eight-Cell Embryo
Alan Trounson, Linda Mohr
Nature 1983;305(5936):707 to 709. Published 20 October 1983. Read the paper.
How we know
Abstract read on nature.com and PubMed, 6 October 2026. Zoe Leyland's birth date (28 March 1984) is carried from the museum's records.
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