Born: 25 April 1945, United Kingdom
Died: 16 March 1985
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
It is frustratingly common for the work of nurses to be undervalued. Embryologist and nurse Jean Purdy was a key contributor to the work that resulted in the birth of the first IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) baby in 1978. Yet as her male colleagues Professor Sir Robert Edwards and the surgeon Patrick Steptoe were lauded, Purdy was ignored to the point that she was deliberately excluded from a plaque honouring the achievement despite protests from Edwards. When he proposed including her, he was told by local health authorities that it would read “Mr Patrick Steptoe, Dr. Robert Edwards and their supporting staff.” A 1981 letter from Edwards pushing the point reads, “I feel strongly about the inclusion of the names of the people who helped with the conception of Louise Brown. I feel this especially about Jean Purdy, who travelled to Oldham with me for 10 years, and contributed as much as I did to the project. Indeed, I regard her as an equal contributor to Patrick Steptoe and myself.” In another instance he referred to her as “crucial,” and that the work actually stopped for several months when Purdy had to take leave to care for her ailing mother. Edwards alone received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010. While both Steptoe and Purdy had died in the 1980s and were therefore ineligible because it cannot be given posthumously, it seems likely based on many other examples that were this not the case, Steptoe would have been included and Purdy excluded.