Charles Thibault

Charles Georges Thibault, born 1919 and died 2003, was a French reproductive biologist renowned for his pioneering research on the maturation of the egg and its fertilization. He played a major role in characterizing the control of meiosis in the egg and provided the first cytological descriptions of the fertilization events leading up to the first cell cleavage, work that underpinned advances in embryo manipulation for domestic animal improvement. His career reached a peak with his appointment as president of the French national scientific research organization CNRS, and in 1988 he shared the Wolf Prize in Agriculture with Christopher Polge of the United Kingdom for pioneering work in reproductive physiology including cell preservation, fertilization processes, egg biology and embryo manipulation.