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Christopher Polge

Agriculture, General and Allied Sciences

Ernest John Christopher Polge (1926 to 2006) was an English biologist known for his pioneering work in cryopreservation, the freezing of living cells and tissue for long-term storage. As a doctoral student he found a way to keep frozen biological material viable, producing the first chicks hatched from eggs fertilized with frozen sperm in 1950, and he went on to show that cattle sperm frozen for more than a year could still produce strong pregnancy rates, work that transformed livestock artificial insemination; he received the Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 1988.

Facts
Birth Year
1926 1
Death Year
2006 1
Nationality
English 1
Defining Contribution
Polge produced the first chicks from eggs fertilised with frozen sperm in 1950, then showed cattle could reach high pregnancy rates from sperm frozen over a year, founding livestock semen cryopreservation and modern artificial insemination. 1
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Christopher Polge (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • lead sentence
    Ernest John Christopher Polge (16 August 1926-17 August 2006) was an English biologist, most noted for his work in cryopreservation.
  • second paragraph
    In 1950, Polge produced the first chicks from eggs fertilised with frozen sperm, the first vertebrates to be produced in this way. Two years later, Polge reported high pregnancy rates in cattle using sperm that had been frozen for periods in excess of a year, work which had far-reaching consequences for the future of artificial insemination and genetic improvement in livestock.
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