1944-

English Embryologist

In February 1997 Ian Wilmut made international headlines when he announced that he and other researchers at the Roslin Institute in Scotland had successfully cloned the first mammal, a sheep named Dolly, from an adult animal. This meant that in the future animals could be cloned to produce proteins for the manufacture of certain pharmaceuticals. However, the experiment was not without controversy. Many speculated about what cloning could mean if applied to human beings, though Wilmut emphasized the fact that his work was intended purely for animals.

Wilmut was born on July 7, 1944, in Hampton Lucey, Warwick, England. His interest in embryology began as a student at the University of Nottingham, where he met renowned reproduction expert G. Eric Lamming. Wilmut graduated from Nottingham in 1967 with a degree in agricultural sciences, and went on to pursue his doctoral studies at Darwin College, Cambridge. There he...