Source Daily Mail
1978 THE YEAR IT ALL BEGAN
THE BREAKTHROUGH
As lab technician Jean Purdy watched the single-cell embryo in the petri dish in front of her divide into eight cells, she could, presumably, never have imagined exactly what that moment would herald.
For not only would it lead to the birth of Louise Brown nine months later — the world’s first ‘test tube baby’ — after that particular developing embryo was successfully implanted into Louise’s mother, but ultimately it would mean the birth of more than six million people, who might not have existed otherwise.
Purdy is now considered to be the world’s first embryologist — and one of a team of three British scientists, along with scientist Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecologist at Oldham General Hospital, whose dogged determination ushered in the age of IVF.
