- Person
- Gregory Pincus
- Lived
- 1903–1967
- Field
- Reproductive biology
- From
- American
The story
Gregory Pincus was born in 1903 in Woodbine, New Jersey, to Russian Jewish immigrants. His father taught agriculture and edited a farm journal, and his uncle Jacob Lipman was a leading agricultural scientist at Rutgers. After a degree at Cornell, Pincus earned his doctorate at Harvard in 1927, then studied reproductive biology at Cambridge and genetics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. Back at Harvard he became an assistant professor in 1931 and a rising star in the study of mammalian reproduction.
At Harvard he perfected some of the earliest methods of transplanting eggs from one female animal to another and developed techniques for producing multiple ovulation in laboratory animals. In 1934, at the age of 31, he made national headlines by achieving in vitro fertilisation of rabbit eggs: he removed eggs, fertilised them outside the body and placed them back in a rabbit. It was an early demonstration of in vitro fertilisation in mammals, and PBS's American Experience describes him as decades ahead of his time.
He followed it with studies of eggs activated to develop without fertilisation, and a rabbit produced this way appeared on the cover of Look magazine in 1937. In 1936 he published The Eggs of Mammals, which American Experience calls a seminal work that won wide acclaim in the international scientific community.
The public reaction was far less kind. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World had just appeared, and newspapers and magazines cast the young scientist as a "Dr. Frankenstein" creating fatherless test-tube creatures. Harvard denied him tenure and did not reappoint him. His friend Hudson Hoagland brought him to Clark University in Worcester, and in 1944 the two founded the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology.
The setback turned out to be a beginning. The knowledge of eggs, ovulation and reproductive hormones that Pincus built up in the 1930s led directly to his later work on the contraceptive pill. His methods of handling and studying mammalian eggs outside the body also pointed the way for later reproductive science, including the human IVF that arrived in 1978 and has since helped millions of families have children.
Why it matters
Pincus's early egg experiments helped lay scientific groundwork for fertility treatments that have since helped millions of families have children.
About Gregory Pincus
Biologist, son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who led the research that produced the first oral contraceptive pill, approved in the United States in 1960.
More about Gregory Pincus
- Gregory Pincus founded a leading hormone conferenceIn 1944 Gregory Pincus organised the Laurentian Hormone Conference and edited its first 23 volumes of proceedings, a key forum for endocrinology.
- Gregory Pincus developed the birth control pillWorking from a struggling independent lab, Gregory Pincus led the research that produced the first oral contraceptive, approved by the US FDA in 1960.
- Pincus studied stress in wartime pilotsDuring the Second World War Gregory Pincus and Hudson Hoagland studied stress and fatigue for the US Navy and air forces, measuring hormones in pilots.
- Pincus built a world centre for hormone researchThe Worcester Foundation, co-founded by Gregory Pincus in 1944, became an international centre for steroid hormone research, hosting over 300 foreign scientists.
Sources
- Gregory Pincus (1903–1967) American Experience: The Pill, PBS
- Gregory Goodwin Pincus Wikipedia
- Gregory Goodwin Pincus (1903–1967) Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Arizona State University
- Gregory Goodwin Pincus Encyclopedia.com
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.