Patrick Steptoe

Patrick Christopher Steptoe CBE FRS was an English obstetrician and gynaecologist and a pioneer of fertility treatment. Steptoe was responsible with biologist and physiologist Robert Edwards and the nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy for developing in vitro fertilisation. Louise Joy Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born on 25 July 1978. Edwards was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the development of in vitro fertilisation; Steptoe and Purdy were not eligible for consideration because the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.