Test tube baby pioneer Robert Edwards given Nobel Prize for medicine

British scientist Professor Robert Edwards, the man who devised the fertility treatment IVF, has been awarded this year's Nobel prize for medicine.

Cambridge physiologist Prof Edwards, now 85, and Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecologic surgeon, developed IVF technology in which egg cells are fertilised outside the body and implanted in the womb. Dr Steptoe died in 1988.

The pair's groundbreaking work led to the birth of the world's first test tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978, The Press Association reports.

The Nobel Assembly at the Swedish Karolinska Institute said: 'His contributions represent a milestone in the development of modern medicine.

'His achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity including more than 10 percent of all couples worldwide,' Daily Mail reports.