Steen Malte Willadsen (born 1943 in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

) is a Danish

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

credited with being the first to clone a mammal using nuclear transfer. Willadsen graduated from the Royal Veterinary College of Copenhagen in 1969, and received a PhD in reproductive physiology there in 1973. In 1984, at the British

Agricultural Research Council The Agricultural and Food Research Council (AFRC) was a British Research Council responsible for funding and managing scientific and technological developments in farming and horticulture. History The AFRC was formed in 1983 from its predecessor ...

's Institute of Animal Physiology, Cambridge, he successfully used cells from early embryos to clone sheep by nuclear transfer. The procedure he developed was essentially identical to the one used to create

Dolly the sheep Dolly (5 July 1996 – 14 February 2003) was a female Finn-Dorset sheep and the first mammal that was cloned from an adult somatic cell. She was cloned by associates of the Roslin Institute in Scotland, using the process of nuclear trans ...

, although nuclei from a mature sheep were used instead of sheep embryos. Prior to the nuclear transfer experiments, Willadsen had developed methods for freezing sheep and cow embryos, embryo manipulation methods for producing genetically identical animals (primarily identical twins in sheep, cattle, pigs, and horses), and for producing mammalian chimaeras, including interspecies chimaeras.

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External links

Thinkquest profile
Living people 1943 births Danish scientists {{Denmark-scientist-stub