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On July 25, 1978, our world learned of a medical marvel unlike anything it had ever known. A baby had just been born. But, hold on. This was not just any baby. This infant was an astonishing wee miracle who was surprisingly normal in virtually every way. Louise Joy Brown weighed five pounds, twelve ounces and was delivered by Caesarean section in Oldham General Hospital in Manchester, England.

Yes, indeed, little Louise was normal in every way—except for one very abnormal thing … the method in which she was conceived. You see, nine months earlier, doctors had removed a mature egg from one of her mother’s ovaries. They then carefully (oh, so very carefully) combined it in a glass dish with her father’s sperm. Voila! Louise was created.

She would become known as the world’s first test tube baby. Some of you may well remember when every news outlet burst forth with the announcement. Not only was this a blessing of immeasurable proportions for the grateful mother and father, but it gave hope to infertile couples all over the globe that they, too, might one day become parents.

Lesley Brown (Louise’s mother) had been trying to conceive naturally for nine agonizing years. When doctors finally discovered that both of her fallopian tubes were blocked, there was no way a pregnancy could ever happen.

Then on that wondrous day—November 10, 1977—Brown underwent an experimental procedure. It would later be known as “in vitro fertilization” and would go on to change the world of human reproduction.

During the in vitro process, doctors took a mature egg from one of Lesley’s ovaries and, in a Petri dish, combined it with her husband’s sperm. A few days later, they implanted the egg into her uterus. Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy, the developers of this miraculous technique, watched as their remarkable procedure begin to unfold.

Of the three, however, Purdy alone actually witnessed Brown’s embryonic cells dividing. Thirty-three years later Edwards was the only surviving member of the trio. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the work the trio had developed so many years before.

Four years after Louise Joy Brown was born, she was joined by a younger sister. Baby Natalie was also conceived in a Petri dish and became the world’s 40th child born by IVF. In 1999, Natalie was the first in vitro human to give birth herself. She did so without IVF!

Let us hope with all our hearts that the medical world will never stop amazing us with its wonders.