Robert G. Edwards

Sir Robert Geoffrey Edwards was born on 27 September of 1925 in Manchester is a British physiologist and pioneer in Reproductive medicine and in-vitro fertilization. Edwards successfully pioneered conception through IVF (in-vitro fertilization), which led to the birth of the first test-tube baby. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the development of in-vitro fertilization".

After finishing Manchester Central High School he served in the British Army, and then completed his undergraduate studies in agriculture at the University of Wales. In 1955 he received his Ph.D. and in 1963 he joined the University of Cambridge. In about 1960 Edwards started to study human fertilization, and he continued his work at Cambridge. In 1968 he was able to achieve fertilization of a human egg in the laboratory. Edwards developed human culture media to allow the fertilization and early embryo culture.

In-vitro fertilization meant a new way to help infertile couples who formerly had no possibility of having a baby. In 2010 about four million children have been born by IVF.Edwards continued a career as a scientist and an editor of medical journals and started to collaborate with Patrick Steptoe, a gynecologic. Edwards and Steptoe founded the Bourn Hall Clinic as a place to advance their work and train new specialists.

He recived many awards, these are one of them:

· In 1984, Edwards was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

· In 2001, he was awarded the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award
"for the development of in vitro fertilization, a technological advance that has revolutionized the treatment of human infertility."

· On 4 October 2010, it was announced that Edwards had been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of in-vitro fertilization and for advancing treatment of infertility and noted that IVF babies have similar health statuses to ordinary babies.

His wife is Ruth Fowler Edwards, the granddaughter of physicist Ernest Rutherford and daughter of physicist Ralph Fowler.

I chose this person because in my opinion  what he did is very interesting. He give the possibility to infertile cuoples to have a child. This is very nice because there are a lot of couples that they don't have the possibility to have a child. If you want to see more information click here.

Collaborative stories

We have written this story in the ICT's class. We wrote one paragraph of four or five lines in our story and then we passed our story to the other couple's to do the same as we did. If you wanted to see the original docs document click here.

 THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF HENRY

Once upon a time, in a rainy day Henry was at home. He was watching a horror film on the TV with his friends Mark and Tom. They were eating pop corns when the light went out and the door bell rang. They were very frightened no one dared to open the door. Finally, the bell stopped and Henry decided to call to his parents, but they didn’t answer it.

Nobody wanted to open the door, so they decided to open it all together. They opened the door but they didn’t see anything, and suddenly the telephone rang. Henry picked up the phone, and a strange voice was saying that he was inside the house and that he would kill all of them. As they didn’t know what to do, the three of them stayed all the time in the kitchen with knives to protect themselves.

But the time was running and nothing happened, they left the knives on the floor because they thought that it was a joke and they started sleeping.When Henry woke up, Mark and Tom were not in the kitchen, Henry started shouting but nobody answered. He was scared and then, the telephone rang, he picked it up; it was the same person.

This time, the same person said to Henry that he had Tom and Mark kidnapped and Henry was very scared and he didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, he got crazy,  he went to the kitchen, he take a knife and he inserted it in his heart. When Henry’s parents, Tom and Mark arrived at the house they started laughing, because they knew that it was a joke, but when they went into the kitchen they saw Henry with a lot of blood around him.

All of them were astonished when they saw the horrible situation. The police didn’t do anything because Henry inserted the knife. The family was terribly sad but with the time they assumed the loss. Their life was going forward until they received an anonymous call with a men voice. The joke was a not real joke, the telephone killer had appeared again.

The killer called to them again, and he said that one of them had to kill the other, because then the killer was going to kill both of them, and Tom and Mark looked to each other and they started crying. Tom didn’t want to die, so he went running to the kitchen and he took a knife, and Mark said to Tom that he couldn't do that, but Tom didn’t listen to Mark and when he was going to kill Mark... he woke up, all was a dream.

So Henry woke up, he went to the bath, he wet his face, he went to the kitchen, he drank a glass of water and he get back to bed. But then, he heard a strange noise and he phoned Mark. When Mark arrived, the lights of house went out and they enter in the bathroom to protected because they were very scared. But...

The killer have lot of material to detroyed all, he destroyed the door and Henry and Mark were there, so the killer take a rope and he tied them with rope. When the light switch on, Henry and Mark were in one strange fourth. Suddenly, the killer appeared and he tortured them. Finally, the killer killed Henry and Mark and when Tom went to Henry's house to visit him he saw all the dissaster. 

THE END