Scientific Pioneer Rewarded

Robert Edwards, CBE, FRS, MA, Emeritus Professor of Human Reproduction at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Churchill College has been awarded one of America's most distinguished honours for his outstanding contributions to basic and clinical medical research.

The 2001 Albert Lasker Medical Research Award for Clinical Medical Research was awarded to Professor Edwards for the development of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) - a technological advance that has revolutionised the treatment of human fertility.

Robert Edwards began his work in 1955 and went on to pioneer a field that has touched millions of people's lives. He and his colleague, Patrick Steptoe who died in 1988, marched forward against tremendous opposition and scepticism. As a result of their efforts almost one million IVF babies have been born.

The Lasker Awards were first presented 56 years ago by philanthropists Albert and Mary Woodard Lasker. After Albert Lasker's death in 1953, Mary Lasker continued as the guiding force behind the Awards. She was a dominant figure in a five-decade quest to secure public support for medical research funding in America. Mrs Lasker died in 1994, remembered for her powerful influence on health and science in America, through her remarkable efforts to expand support for the National Institutes of Health.

The Lasker Awards, for Basic and Clinical Medical Research and Public Service, were set up to raise public awareness of the enormous value of biomedical research to a healthy society. They focus each year on an elite community of remarkable scientists whose work has been key to understanding disease and the human being's capacity to overcome it.