Congratulations on the Nobel

This year's Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology goes to physiologist Robert Edwards, now an emeritus professor at the University of Cambridge, for his work developing in vitro fertilization, which the Nobel committee calls a "milestone in the development of modern medicine." The Guardian notes that when Edwards began working in the 1950s at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, scientists could fertilize rabbit eggs outside the body, but it took Edwards until the end of the 1960s to do that with human eggs. "I'll never get forget the day I looked down the microscope and saw something funny in the cultures. I looked down the microscope and what I saw was a human blastocyst gazing up at me. I thought: 'We've done it,'" Edwards recalled in 2008, according to The Guardian. In 1978, the first baby, Louise Brown, was born through in vitro fertilization. "It's fantastic news, me and mum are so glad that one of the pioneers of IVF has been given the recognition he deserves. We hold Bob in great affection and are delighted to send our personal congratulations," Brown says in a statement, according to the Associated Press. The Nobel committee adds that about 4 million babies have been born through IVF. Edwards' colleague Patrick Steptoe died in 1988.