Louise Brown, the first IVF baby, was born in 1978

The world’s first “test-tube baby,” Louise Joy Brown, was born on 25 July 1978 at Oldham General Hospital in England, the first person conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF). She was delivered by Caesarean section after a full-term pregnancy and weighed 5 lb 12 oz (2.6 kg). Her parents, Lesley and John Brown, had been trying for a child for nine years.

The science behind her took more than a decade, and alongside physiologist Robert Edwards and gynecologist Patrick Steptoe the team had a third member: nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy. When Oldham’s health authority planned a plaque to mark the birth, Edwards wrote repeatedly asking for her name to sit beside his and Steptoe’s, saying she:

“travelled to Oldham with me for 10 years and contributed as much as I did to the project. Indeed, I regard her as an equal contributor to Patrick Steptoe and myself.” — Robert Edwards, letter to Oldham Health Authority

The authority did not change the plaque. The road from a lab dish to millions of births ran like this:

• 1969: Edwards first fertilized a human egg in the laboratory, and Steptoe collected eggs by laparoscopy, then a new and controversial technique. When the UK’s Medical Research Council declined to fund the next phase, the pair carried on with a private donation.
• 1978: Louise Brown is born, after the trio’s years of work in Oldham.
• 2010: Edwards alone receives the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The prize is not given posthumously, and Purdy (died 1985) and Steptoe (died 1988) were gone. By then about 4 million people had been born through IVF.
• 2015: Purdy is finally named on a plaque, at Kershaw’s Hospital in Oldham, where much of the research took place.
• 2018: The international monitoring committee ICMART puts the total at more than 8 million, with over half a million more born every year.