Global General

Fertility scientist wins 2010 Nobel for medicine

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-10-04 18:04

British physiologist Robert Edwards attends the 30th birthday celebrations of Bourn Hall, a fertility clinic he co-founded in Cambridge in a July 12, 2008 file photo. [Photo/Agencies]

STOCKHOLM - British physiologist Robert Edwards, whose work led to the first "test-tube baby", won the 2010 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology, the prize-awarding institute said on Monday.

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Edwards, 85, won the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.5 million), Sweden's 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 percent of all couples worldwide," the institute said in a statement.

Medicine is traditionally the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year. Prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel.