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̽��ֱ��talk, which is being hosted by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Centre for Family Research, will take place at the Law Faculty, Sidgwick Avenue, at 5pm. It is free of charge and open to all.

Given by Martin Johnson, Professor of Reproductive Sciences at the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience and titled “Bob Edwards: the Early Years”, it will give a fascinating insight into the determination, courage and intellect of a man born into a working class family who went on to achieve a string of scientific breakthroughs that helped to transform the lives of thousands of families.

̽��ֱ��Centre for Family Research is hosting the event because it is a leading hub for research into non-traditional families, including the increasing numbers with children born with help from assisted reproduction procedures, such as IVF.

Professor Susan Golombok, the Centre's Director, said: "In the early days of IVF, interest by scientists and doctors in the children created through this procedure ended at the point of conception or, at most, at birth. Bob Edwards stood out in that he was interested in the children he helped to create and wanted to know how they fared through childhood and into adult life. It is a particular honour and pleasure for us to host this lecture as Bob has always been a great supporter of our research."

̽��ֱ��Stockholm talk was given by Professor Johnson because Professor Edwards was unable to travel to Sweden himself through ill health. His wife Ruth, who worked with him while they were students in Edinburgh, four of his five daughters and six of his 12 grand-children, were able to attend.

Professor Johnson worked alongside Professor Edwards as a PhD student and later as a post-doctoral researcher. He will give a vivid account of Professor Edwards’s early life, starting with his modest roots in the small Yorkshire mill town of Batley, where his father worked on the Settle-Carlisle railway and his mother was a mill machinist.

Edwards’s academic life got off to a flying start with a coveted scholarship place at grammar school. Holidays were spent in the Yorkshire Dales, helping on farms and immersing himself in natural history. After four years in the army during and after World War II, he went to ̽��ֱ�� College of North Wales in Bangor to study agriculture. Bored by the course, he did badly and left with a simple pass.

“It was typical of Edwards that, despite berating himself for his shoddy performance, he continued to aim high. He got a place on a diploma course in Animal Genetics at Edinburgh ̽��ֱ�� – which led on to a PhD allowing him to carry out research into the developmental biology of the mouse. Unusually for the time, he combined the disciplines of embryology and reproduction with that of genetics – a field where knowledge was still at a rudimentary stage,” said Professor Johnson.

A key problem was the supply of mouse eggs for research to fuel Edwards’s aim to manipulate the chromosomal constitution of embryos so as to assess the developmental consequences. With his wife, Dr Ruth Fowler, who was studying for a PhD in genetics at Edinburgh, he developed the technique of induced ovulation for recovering eggs from adult mice using exogenous hormones. In his incredibly productive six years in Edinburgh, Edwards forged ahead in what later became known as “genetic engineering” and authored 38 papers, many of them well ahead of their time.

“After a spell at the California Institute of Technology where he began to bring together the latest research into reproduction and immunology in order to develop immunological methods of contraception, Edwards returned to the UK to take up a post at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill. At this point, with growing concern about the growth of world population, his focus remained on the science of immuno-contraception – a birth control method that uses the body’s immune response to prevent pregnancy,” said Professor Johnson.

It took the discovery in 1959 that Down’s syndrome was caused by an aberrant number of human chromosomes to spur him into resuming his experiments with the maturation of eggs, initially those of mice and later those of other animals. To achieve his aims of understanding the origins of Down’s syndrome in humans, however, Edwards needed a supply of human eggs. This was a major stumbling block.

Edwards moved to Cambridge in 1963, after a year in Glasgow where he worked at a furious pace to learn more about cell culture. After five years at Cambridge, he was able to secure a supply of human eggs through his partnership with gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe whose laparascopic technique provided him with the ovarian biopsies from which to mature eggs in vitro. ̽��ֱ��two men began to forge a close, though not always harmonious, working relationship.

“Although Bob and Patrick were very different personalities, and brought very different skills to the project, they shared energy, commitment and vision, and each was marginalised by his peers. This marginalisation in effect cemented them together,” said Professor Johnson. “ ̽��ֱ��1969 Nature paper that described the experiments leading to IVF in humans caused a huge stir in the media. I well remember the impossible tangle of TV cables and pushy reporters trying to force their way up to our fourth floor laboratories in Cambridge.”

However, the mindset of the 1960s was very different to that of today, leading to many bitter attacks on Edwards and Steptoe by both the media and by their peers in academia.

“Overpopulation and family planning were seen as the dominant concern and the infertile were ignored as at best a tiny and irrelevant minority and at worst a positive contribution to population control. This was a values system that Bob simply did not accept and the many encouraging letters from the infertile that he received spurred him on. His ability to read the pain of others was to be reinforced many times over,” said Professor Johnson.

“Steptoe and Edwards were also attacked for their willingness to talk to the media. For Bob there was no choice – his egalitarian spirit demanded that he trust to the people’s common sense. His radical political views demanded that he fought the corner of the infertile – the underdog with no voice. ̽��ֱ��Yorkshireman in him relished engagement in debate and argument.”

In 1978 Louise Brown was born, heralded as the first test tube baby. This huge landmark, the result of many decades of dogged perseverance, brilliant vision and sheer hard slog, changed everything.

“It has been a privilege to work for so many years with such a remarkable man who has done so much for so many families. Our sadness is that this award has come so late that Bob’s health leaves him too frail to fully enjoy it. He is, however, very happy indeed about the prize,” said Professor Johnson.��

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