STOCKHOLM — Robert Edwards of Britain won the 2010 Nobel Prize in medicine today for developing in-vitro fertilization, a breakthrough that ignited heated controversy in the 1970s but has helped millions of infertile couples since then have children.

Edwards, an 85-year-old professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, started working on IVF as early as the 1950s. He developed the technique — in which egg cells are removed from a woman, fertilized outside her body and then implanted into the womb — together with British gynecologist surgeon Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988.

On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown in Britain became the first baby born through the groundbreaking procedure, marking a revolution in fertility treatment.

Prize committee secretary Goran Hansson said Edwards was not in good health and would not be giving interviews today.