The Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded Monday to the "father of the test tube baby."
Robert G. Edwards, a British professor based at Cambridge University in England, won the Nobel Prize for his contribution to in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
According to CNN, about four million babies have been born following IVF since the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, now 32, was born on July 25, 1978.
Edwards' research has made it possible to treat infertility, which affect about 10 percent of the world's population, despite originally facing opposition from churches, governments, and other scientific colleagues, the BBC reported.
The probability of conceiving with IVF today is one in five, the same as couples trying to conceive naturally.
