Test-tube Louise’s tribute to ‘grandfather’ Sir Robert

Louise Brown with ‘grandfather’ Professor Sir Robert Edwards

Oldham and the world’s first test-tube baby has paid a personal tribute to the Nobel prize–winning IVF pioneer behind her birth, who has died at the age of 87.

Louise Brown says she thought of Professor Sir Robert Edwards — one of two fertility experts involved in her birth in 1978 — as a grandfather.

She said: “It was really sad to hear the news. I have always regarded Robert Edwards as like a grandfather to me. His work, along with Patrick Steptoe, has brought happiness and joy to millions of people all over the world. I am glad he lived long enough to be recognised with a Nobel Prize for his work.

“The thoughts of myself and my sister Natalie, who was also born through IVF, are with his family at this sad time.”

News of Sir Robert’s death after a long illness was announced yesterday on behalf of his family by Cambridge University where he worked for many years in the department of physiology. His Oldham colleague Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecologist, died in 1988.

Headlines were made around the world when Louise became the world’s first test-tube baby, born at Oldham and District General Hospital after her parents’ treatment at Dr Kershaw’s Cottage Hospital, now the familiar hospice. More than five million IVF babies have followed Louise into the world.

Tributes flooded in for Sir Robert, who was knighted in 2011 a year after receiving a Nobel prize for his work on the development of in–vitro fertilisation.

Professor Martin Johnson, one of Sir Robert’s first graduate students at Cambridge, said: “Bob Edwards was a remarkable man who changed the lives of so many people. He was not only a visionary in his science but also in his communication to the wider public.

“He will be greatly missed by his colleagues, students, his family and all the many people he has helped to have children.”