
The history of assisted reproductive technology (ART) dates back more than a century when Walter Heape, a professor at the University of Cambridge, reported the first case of embryo transfer in Rabbits in 1890s. Several decades later, Aldous Huxley conceptualized the technique of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in his science fiction novel Brave New World (c.1932). After successful mammalian experiments, attempts at human IVF began in 1940s when Miriam Menken and John Rock exposed human oocytes recovered via laparotomy to spermatozoa in vitro. Three decades later, Louise Brown was born after successful IVF.