2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Robert G. Edwards. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 4 October 2010.

The citation

The citation reads: "for the development of in vitro fertilization".

The laureate

Robert G. Edwards was born in 1925 in Batley, United Kingdom, and is affiliated with the University of Cambridge, Cambridge.

Why it matters

Edwards developed IVF with the gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988. The first IVF baby, Louise Brown, was born in Oldham in 1978, and millions of people have since been born through the treatment.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.