Jean Purdy

Jean Purdy was a British nurse and embryologist who worked alongside Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe throughout the development of in vitro fertilization (IVF), and was the first to observe the embryonic cells of what became Louise Brown, the first person born through IVF, dividing under the microscope. Edwards himself and later historians of embryology have argued Purdy deserved recognition as a co-discoverer rather than a subordinate assistant (this atlas's own Dissent 727, on the In Vitro Fertilization entity's discoverer fact); she was excluded from the 1980 Oldham commemorative plaque credited only to Edwards and Steptoe, an omission corrected only in 2015, and, having died in 1985, was not eligible for the 2010 Nobel Prize either, since the Nobel is never awarded posthumously.