Patrick Steptoe, an English gynecologist and medical researcher, helped develop the technique of in vitro fertilization. In this process, a mature egg is removed from the female ovary and is fertilized in a test tube. After a short incubation period, the fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus, where it develops as in a typical pregnancy. This procedure gave women whose fallopian tubes were damaged or missing, and were thus unable to become pregnant, the hope that they too could conceive children. Steptoe and his colleague, English physiologist Robert G. Edwards, received international recognition--both positive and negative--when the first so-called test tube baby was born in 1978.

Patrick Christopher Steptoe was born in Oxfordshire, England. His father was a church organist, while his mother served as a social worker. Steptoe studied medicine at the University of London's St. George Hospital Medical School and, after being licensed in 1939, became a...