The fertility pioneer who briefly quit medicine to direct theatre
Robert Winston qualified as a doctor in 1964, then stepped away from clinical work long enough to win a directing award at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. He returned to medicine and helped transform IVF, later becoming one of Britain's most familiar television scientists and, at 67, attempting to learn the saxophone on camera.
Winston was born in London on 15 July 1940 and raised in an Orthodox Jewish family; his mother later became mayor of Southgate, and his father died from medical negligence when Robert was nine. After St Paul's School he trained at the London Hospital Medical College. Following his theatrical detour, he joined Hammersmith Hospital in 1970, taught at the Catholic University of Leuven, and advised the World Health Organization's human reproduction programme from 1975 to 1977.
Back at Hammersmith after research in Texas, he ran an IVF service that introduced a string of improvements. His team pioneered pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, a way of checking embryos for defects before they are implanted, and published early studies of gene activity in human embryos. He has written over 300 peer-reviewed papers and led a charity, later renamed the Genesis Research Trust, that has raised over £80 million for research into reproductive disease. He has also been openly critical of commercialised fertility care, arguing that couples suffer when treatment starts before a proper diagnosis.
To many Britons he is a broadcaster. He presented BBC series including The Human Body, which won three BAFTA awards, Child of Our Time and Walking with Cavemen, and even appeared on the radio soap The Archers playing a fertility consultant. In 2007's Play It Again he tried the saxophone, having not touched an instrument since learning the recorder at 11.
Made a life peer on 18 December 1995, he sits on the Labour benches in the House of Lords and has chaired its science committee. At Imperial College he holds a chair in Science and Society and founded the Reach Out Laboratory, which brings schoolchildren in daily for hands-on experiments. He holds honorary doctorates from twenty-three universities.
Source: Robert Winston, Baron Winston
