£800k for Nobel Prize medal of IVF pioneer
THE Nobel Prize Medal awarded to the pioneer of IVF just three years before he died could fetch £800,000 at auction.
British scientist Sir Robert Edwards developed, with his colleagues, the procedure through which eight million babies have now been born.
He was presented with the 18-carat green gold medal in 2010 and it is now being sold at Christie’s by his children.
Delighted
They said: “Our father was delighted to be awarded the Nobel Prize recognising his team’s research work over many years, which by then had helped millions of couples throughout the world overcome the burden of infertility.”
Louise Brown, the first test tube baby, was born in 1978, following two decades developing the procedure.
On Sir Robert’s death, aged 87 in 2013, Louise led the tributes, saying he had brought happiness and joy
IVF pioneer Sir Robert Edwards to millions. Sir Robert realised as early as 1958 that fertilisation outside of the body might be used to help treat infertility.
But he and his collaborators, Patrick Steptoe and Jean Purdy, faced an uphill battle, with severe criticism from religious leaders and the medical establishment as well as some of the public.
Sir Robert, Steptoe and Purdy later founded Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridgeshire, where they continued to refine IVF technology. He was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, as his two collaborators has died when it was presented. Christie’s specialist Sophie Hopkins said: “This, for Robert Edwards, was a 20-year slog ending in what must have seemed an almost miraculous birth of Louise Brown.” The medal will be offered in Christie’s upcoming Eureka! Scientific Breakthroughs Of The 20th Century online sale, running from June 24 to July 16.