Robert Winston

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Robert Winston bigraphy, stories - British scientist

Robert Winston : biography

15 July 1940 –

Robert Maurice Lipson Winston, Baron Winston (born 15 July 1940) is a professor, medical doctor, scientist, television presenter and politician.

Honors and awards

  • Cedric Carter Medal, Clinical Genetics Society, 1993
  • Victor Bonney Medal for contributions to surgery, Royal College of Surgeons, 1993
  • Gold Medallist, Royal Society of Health, 1998
  • Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), 1998
  • British Medical Association Gold Award for Medicine in the Media, 1999
  • Michael Faraday Prize, Royal Society, 1999
  • Edwin Stevens Medal (the Royal Society of Medicine) 2003
  • Aventis Prize, Royal Society 2004
  • Al-Hammadi Medal, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 2005
  • Sixteen honorary doctorates
  • Robert Winston won the VLV Award for the most outstanding personal contribution to British television in 2004
  • Robert Winston was honoured by the City of Westminster at a Marylebone tree planting ceremony in July 2011http://www.westminster.gov.uk/press-releases/2011-06/professor-lord-winston-marks-london-tree-planting/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GFVp1XOy6Y Professor Lord Winston captures carbon in Marylebone

Media career

Winston was the presenter of many BBC television series, including Superhuman, The Secret Life of Twins, Child of Our Time, Human Instinct, and the BAFTA award-winner The Human Body. As a traditional Jew with an orthodox background, The Spirit of Things, ABC National Radio, Australia, 4 June 2006 he also presented The Story of God, exploring the development of religious beliefs and the status of faith in a scientific age. He presented the BBC documentary "Walking with Cavemen", a major BBC series that presented some controversial views about early man but was endorsed by leading anthropologists and scientists. One theory was that Homo sapiens have a uniquely developed imagination that helped them to survive. Winston’s documentary Threads of Life won the international science film prize in Paris in 2005. His BBC series Child Against All Odds explored ethical questions raised by IVF treatment. In 2008, he presented Super Doctors, about decisions made every day in frontier medicine.

In 2007, Winston appeared in the TV series Play It Again, in which he attempted to learn to play the saxophone, despite not having played a musical instrument since the age of 11, when he learned the recorder., BBC

Among many BBC Radio 4 programmes, he has appeared on The Archers radio soap as a fertility consultant. He appeared on The Wright Stuff as a panelist in February 2011. Winston is featured in the Symphony of Science episode Ode to the Brain. He also took part in 2011 TV series Jamie’s Dream School.

Early life and education

Robert Winston was born in London to Laurence Winston and Ruth Winston-Fox and raised as an Orthodox Jew. His mother was Mayor of the former Borough of Southgate. Winston’s polymath father died as a result of medical negligence when Winston was nine years old, which was partly the inspiration for his eventual career choice. Robert has two younger siblings: a sister, Willow, and a brother, Anthony., The Daily Telegraph, 15 August 2008

Winston attended St Paul’s School (London), later graduating from The London Hospital Medical College, University of London, in 1964 with a degree in medicine and surgery and achieved prominence as an expert in human fertility. For a brief time he gave up clinical medicine and worked as a theatre director, winning the National Directors’ Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1969. Sheffield Hallam University On returning to academic medicine, he developed tubal microsurgery and various techniques in reproductive surgery, including sterilization reversal.

Medical career

Winston joined Hammersmith Hospital as a registrar in 1970 as a Wellcome Research Fellow. He became an Associate Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) in 1975. He was a scientific advisor to the World Health Organisation’s programme in human reproduction from 1975 to 1977. He joined The Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London as consultant and Reader in 1977. After conducting research as Professor of Gynaecology at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1980, he returned to the UK setting up the IVF service at Hammersmith Hospital which pioneered various improvements in this technology, and became Dean of the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in London until its merger with Imperial College in 1997. As Professor of Fertility Studies at Hammersmith, Winston led the IVF team that pioneered preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which identifies defects in human embryos.