Beschreibung:

[Sir Robert Geoffrey EDWARDS (1925-2013)] – NOBEL PRIZE MEDAL. Nobel Prize Medal in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Robert G. Edwards in 2010 ‘for the development of in vitro fertilization’. 18-carat gold, 66mm diameter, 175 grams. Profile bust of Alfred Nobel facing left on obverse, legend 'ALFR. NOBEL' at left and his birth and death dates in Roman numerals at right, signed at lower left ‘E. LINDBERG 1902’, reverse with allegorical depiction of the figure of Medicine, with an open book on her lap, collecting water from a spring to quench an ailing girl’s thirst, legend ‘INVENTAS VITAM IUVAT EXCOLUISSE PER ARTES’ around edge, the plaque at base inscribed ‘R. G. EDWARDS/ MMX’ with ‘REG. UNIVERSITAS – MED. CHIR. CAROLl’ either side, signed lower right ‘E. LINDBERG’; original red morocco gilt case, lettered ‘R. G. Edwards’. [With:] Robert Edwards’ Nobel Diploma, Stockholm, 10 December 2010, in Swedish, calligraphic text in black, gilt and red on vellum, 2 leaves, 330 x 205mm, laid down in red morocco binding with gilt monogram. Case. Provenance: Offered for sale by the executors for the estate of the late Ruth Eileen Edwards. Robert Edwards was the sole recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded ‘for the development of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) therapy. His achievements […] made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity including more than 10% of all couples worldwide […] 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. His contributions represent a milestone in the development of modern medicine.’ (NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020) Robert Geoffrey Edwards was born in 1925 in Batley, Yorkshire, the middle of three academically-gifted sons who would all go on to win scholarships to Manchester Central Boys' High School following the family’s relocation when Robert was five. His education was interrupted by the advent of the Second World War – evacuated back to Yorkshire, to a farm in the Dales, he and his younger brother spent a year without formal education, instead absorbing a great deal about the husbandry of sheep and cattle. On leaving school in 1943, he served in the Middle East; after being demobilised, he applied to study agricultural sciences at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, subsequently transferring to zoology in search of a greater intellectual challenge. A postgraduate diploma in animal genetics at Edinburgh University followed, where Edwards caught the attention of the developmental biologist C.H. Waddington; he completed his PhD (1952-55) under Waddington, and his mentor subsequently secured for him two years of post-doctoral research, notably well-funded at £240 per annum, during which Edwards produced a flurry of papers on the developmental biology of the mouse. While working in research at Edinburgh, he met and married Ruth Eileen Fowler (1930–2013), an endocrinologist; the two went on to have five daughters together. As early as 1958 – while working at the Medical Research Council's National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill, London – Edwards realised that fertilisation outside of the body might be used to help treat infertility. At this point, though, his principal motivation for studying the genetics of early human development lay elsewhere – his research was directed towards a better understanding of the developmental abnormalities causing, among other things, Down, Turner, and Klinefelter syndromes. At first, his work at Mill Hill focused on oocyte maturation: he was excited to discover that rodent eggs mature spontaneously in vitro (in a test tube) at the same rate as in vivo (in the living organism), realising that if the same phenomenon were to be observable in human eggs, it might also be possible to fertilise the mature egg in vitro. Others had already shown that egg cells f