Robert Edwards of Britain won the Nobel Medicine Prize yesterday for the development of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), the Nobel jury said.

Prof. Edwards, 85, won the prestigious prize for his work on IVF, which has helped millions of infertile couples to have a child.

“His contributions represent a milestone in the development of modern medicine,” the Nobel Assembly at the Swedish Karolinska Institute said.

“His achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity including more than 10 per cent of all couples worldwide,” it added.

The IVF procedure entails taking an egg from a woman and fertilising it in the lab-dish with sperm donated from a man.

The egg divides, is allowed to develop into an early-stage embryo and is then inserted in the woman’s uterus where, if all goes well, it will become a baby.

Prof. Edwards began working on developing the process in the 1950s, and “his efforts were finally crowned by success on July 25, 1978, when the world’s first ‘test tube baby’ was born,” the prize jury said.

Since Louise Brown’s birth, around four million people have been born through IVF.

“A new field of medicine has emerged, with Robert Edwards leading the process all the way from the fundamental discoveries to the current, successful IVF therapy,” the jury said.

He developed his laboratory findings “from experiment to practical medicine” with the help of British gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988.

Together they established the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge, the world’s first centre for IVF therapy.

Today, 20 to 30 per cent of eggs fertilised by IVF lead to the birth of a child.

The Medicine Prize kicked off a week of prestigious award announcements, with the two most watched, Literature and Peace, to be announced on Thursday and Friday.

The announcements of the Physics and Chemistry Prizes will be announced today and tomorrow, and the Economics Prize will wrap up the Nobel season on Monday.

Last year, an American trio of researchers, Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak, won the Medicine Prize for identifying a key molecular switch in cellular aging.

They were honoured for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the role of an enzyme called telomerase in maintaining or stripping away this vital shield.

This year’s laureates will receive €1.09 million which can be split between up to three winners per prize.

The Peace Prize will be handed out in Oslo on December 10.

Other Nobel laureates will pick up their prizes in Stockholm on the same day.

Facts and figures

Mountains of facts and figures have gathered about the prestigious Nobel Prizes in their 109-year-old history. Here are a few in connection with this year’s Nobel week, which kicked off yesterday with the Medicine Prize:

• 237: The record number of candidates for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, including 38 organisations. The names of nominees are kept secret by the institute for 50 years, but those who nominate candidates are allowed to reveal their picks, with several Chinese dissidents, Russian human rights group Memorial, the International Space Station and Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu known to be on the list.

• 90: the age of the oldest laureate to win a Nobel, Russian-born American Leonid Hurwicz, who won the Nobel Economics Prize in 2007. He lived only a few months longer, passing away in June 2008.

• 87: The age of the oldest woman to win the prize, British author Doris Lessing, who in 2007 became the oldest winner of the Nobel Literature Prize. Lessing later described winning the award as a “catastrophe” because it left her no time to write.

• 25: The age of British Lawrence Bragg when he won the physics prize in 1915, making him the youngest laureate ever. Germany’s Werner Karl Heisenberg, the 1932 physics laureate, was 31 when he won, while British author Rudyard Kipling remains the youngest Nobel Literature laureate ever honoured, aged 42 when he won in 1907.

• 101: The age of 1986 Nobel Medicine laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini of Italy, making her the oldest living Nobel winner. She won the prize for discoveries of growth factors. In age, she is followed by American William Knowles, who won the Chemistry prize in 2001 and his compatriot John Fenn who won the same prize a year later. They are both 93.

• 6: The number of fathers and sons to have won a Nobel. There has been only one father-daughter and one mother-daughter pair among the laureates. Three married couples have won Nobels. In each of the three latter cases, French scientist Irene Joliot-Curie was one of the laureates.

• 40: the number of women to have won a Nobel since they were first awarded in 1901, including Marie Curie, who won twice (for physics in 1903 and for chemistry in 1935). In comparison 765 men have so far won.

• 2009: The first time a woman won the Nobel Economics Prize (created in 1968 and first attributed a year later), when it went to American Elinor Ostrom. In physics, only two women have won so far, compared to 185 men, and none since 1963.

• 26: The number of Nobel Literature laureates who have written in English, the most used language among winners, followed by French and German (13) Spanish (10), Italian and Swedish (6), Russian (5), Polish (4), Norwegian and Danish (3) and Greek and Japanese (2). Arabic and Chinese figure among other languages represented with one laureate.

• 6: The number of laureates to have declined a Nobel. The only two to do so of their own will were Jean-Paul Sartre, who turned down the 1964 Literature Prize, and Vietnam’s then-Prime Minister Le Duc Tho, who refused to share the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Adolf Hitler forbade three German laureates – Richard Kuhn (Chemistry 1938), Adolf Butenandt (Chemistry 1939) and Gerhard Domagk (Medicine 1939) – from accepting the prize, while Soviet authorities forced Boris Pasternak to decline the 1958 Literature Prize.

The 10 most recent winners of the Nobel Medicine Prize

• 2010: Robert G. Edwards (Britain)
• 2009: Carol Greider and Jack Szostak (US), Elizabeth Blackburn (Australia-US)
• 2008: Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier (France), Harald zur Hausen (Germany)
• 2007: Mario Capecchi (US), Oliver Smithies (US) and Martin Evans (Britain)
• 2006: Andrew Z. Fire (US), Craig C. Mello (US)
• 2005: Barry J. Marshall (Australia), J. Robin Warren (Australia)
• 2004: Richard Axel (US), Linda B. Buck (US)
• 2003: Paul C. Lauterbur (US) and Peter Mansfield (Britain)
• 2002: Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston (Britain), H. Robert Horvitz (US)
• 2001: Leland Hartwell (US), Timothy Hunt and Paul Nurse (Britain)