Patrick Steptoe

Patrick Steptoe was a British obstetrician and gynecologist who, with the physiologist Robert Edwards and the embryologist Jean Purdy, developed in vitro fertilization (IVF). Steptoe performed the laparoscopic egg retrievals central to the technique, refining laparoscopy itself as a gynecological tool along the way. The team's work led to the birth of Louise Brown, the first person born through IVF, on 25 July 1978. Steptoe died in 1988, two years before the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recognized the discovery; since the Nobel is never awarded posthumously, he was excluded from a prize his own surgical skill had made possible.