IVF pioneer Professor Robert Edwards has been awarded a knighthood in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours. The knighthood follows Professor Edwards' Nobel Prize in Medicine win last year for his work developing this fertility treatment. His work led to the birth of Louise Brown, the first so-called 'test tube' baby, in July 1978. Since then, around four million babies have been born after IVF treatment.

Professor Edwards' wife Ruth said on BBC News: 'This honour recognises his years of devotion and dedication to alleviate human infertility despite many setbacks and much opposition'.

Professor Martin Johnson from the University of Cambridge wrote in BioNews last year before Professor Edwards, 85, received this honour: 'Only the UK Government now remains tardily ungenerous in acknowledging with a high honour the achievements of this extraordinary man'. 

Reproduced from BioNews with permission, a web- and email-based source of news, information and comment on assisted reproduction and human genetics, published by Progress Educational Trust.