Professor Martin Johnson

Positions
Life Fellow Emeritus University Professor of Reproductive Sciences
Vice Master/President 2007-2010
Tutor for Graduate Students 2013-14

Department/College
Physiology, Development & Neuroscience
Christ's College

About
Martin H Johnson is an Editor of Reproductive BioMedicine Online and joint Senior Editor of Reproductive BioMedicine and Society. He was Visiting Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Sydney Australia (1999-2004) and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at La Trobe University Melbourne (2005-2006), and, in 2005, he was elected an Honorary Academic Fellow of St Paul's College, Sydney University. He was, with Richard Gardner, Bob Edwards’ first graduate student (1966-1969), and opened the Nobel Symposium on Bob’s work in Stockholm, 2010; chair of the British Society for Developmental Biology (1984-89); a member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (1993–1999); Head of the Anatomy Department, University of Cambridge (1995-1999); treasurer and founding scientific member of the Cambridge Socio-legal group (2000-2014); and specialist scientific advisor to the Joint Lords and Commons Committee scrutinizing the Draft Human Embryos and Tissue Bill (2007). In 1989 he was awarded the Albert Brachet Prize and the Diploma of Laureate of the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts, and was also elected to the Society of Scholars of Johns Hopkins University. In 2014 he was awarded the Marshall medal by the Society for Reproduction and Fertility, and was elected an Honorary Member of that Society and also of the Physiological Society. He was the first CIBA (now Novartis) Foundation Annual Public Lecturer, Swansea (1990), Hammond Lecturer of the Society for the Study of Fertility (1992), Annual Public Lecturer of the Australasian Society for Human Biology, Adelaide (1993), Haliburton Lecturer at King's College London (1994), ST Huang-Chan Memorial Lecturer at Hong Kong University (1997), Ver Heyden de Lancey Lecturer in the Law School, Cambridge (2007), first RG Edwards lecturer in Lisbon (2012), Annual Historical lecturer, the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology, Istanbul (2012), opening plenary lecturer at the Canadian Fertility Society, Vancouver (2013) and the first Annual AE Szulman Memorial lecturer (Pittsburgh, 2015). He is author of Essential Reproduction (seventh edition, Wiley Blackwell, January 2013), co-editor of Sexuality Repositioned (2004), Death Rites and Rights (2007) and Birth Rites and Rights (2011), and has authored over 300 papers on reproductive and developmental science, history, ethics, law and medical education.

Research Interests
Currently, my main interest is in the history of the reproductive and developmental sciences and their historical relationship to the development of human IVF and other clinical technologies, and to their regulation legally and ethically.