From lab to legacy
Catherine (Kay) Elder (BSc Hons 1970) joined the pioneering team responsible for the birth of the first ‘test tube baby’ after they opened Bourn Hall Clinic, the world’s first IVF clinic. Here, Kay shares her story and explains why she has chosen to support scholarships at St Andrews.
In September 1966, after crossing the Tay Bridge from Dundee, my first glimpse of St Andrews felt like entering an enchanted fairyland, where turrets and towers reflected sunshine from the shimmering sea. It was clear that the unlikely road to the door of Hamilton Hall that day had been well worth the journey.
In 1950 our family left the cold austerity of post-war Dundee and settled in Mexico, where my father was a mining engineer. Childhood and teenage years were spent in idyllic rural ‘Colonias’, immersed in the warmth of Mexican culture and climate. All children of primary school age were taught in one classroom by one teacher. Pursuing secondary education required boarding school in the USA, and I was sent to Loretto Academy in El Paso, Texas, graduating in 1964 with a scholarship to study medicine in the US.
Academic aspirations
Political and health issues compelled the family to return to Dundee that summer. Having graduated top of my class with several prizes, we expected the University of Dundee to welcome me as a student. However, without Scottish Highers, no application could be considered. The advice was simply ’get a job’: I abandoned academic aspirations and became a lab technician at Maryfield Hospital, with day-release classes towards an HNC at Dundee Technical College.
In late spring 1965 a senior manager wondered why I wasn’t at university and, on hearing my explanation, he guided me through the necessary application procedures to sit the required Highers. After frantic cramming from borrowed schoolbooks, I sat four of the exams that summer; continuing with work and day-release at the Tech while evening classes at the Commercial College prepared me for two more exams. With six Highers by the summer of 1966, my application to the University of St Andrews to study biochemistry was successful.
My final year Honours thesis supervisor was a professor on sabbatical from the University of Colorado Medical School, who then invited me to join him in Denver to work towards a National Institutes of Health-funded PhD in molecular biology. Post-doctoral research followed in 1974, at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London.
Cancer research and further study
By 1978 I wanted to enhance my interest in cancer research by studying its consequences ‘in real life’. With a scholarship from The Foulkes Foundation, which promotes collaboration between medicine and science, I gained a place at the University of Cambridge Clinical School. Pre-clinical requirements could be completed via a further year at St Andrews, and so I happily returned in 1978.
Bourn Hall Clinic
With an MBBChir from Cambridge, a chance telephone call in 1984 launched my career at Bourn Hall Clinic. The team required a locum doctor, and I was recommended for the post by the School of Clinical Medicine at Cambridge. At the time, I was raising my two young children and taking a career break because part-time opportunities for doctors simply did not exist in the 1980s.
I was instantly fascinated by the scientific potential of IVF, and after a one-week locum period, Patrick Steptoe – the ‘Father of IVF’ and one of the Clinic founders – created a tailored, part-time clinical post that would allow me to also care for my family. This developed into a full-time role as my children grew up. I was appointed Head of the Outpatient Department in 1987 and managed the Clinic’s transition from in-patient to out-patient treatment cycles in 1988 before joining the IVF lab that year as a senior embryologist.
Clinical embryology, the science of IVF: a new medical-scientific discipline
In 1989, Professor Sir Robert (Bob) Edwards – co-father of IVF and 2010 Nobel Laureate – introduced a programme of workshops and seminars at Bourn Hall. Thanks to my dual medical and scientific background, I was appointed Director of Continuing Education, a post that I held for 16 years before joining Professor Edwards as his Deputy Editor for the journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online.
The experience of hosting and teaching professionals from all over the world who wanted to learn about IVF identified an urgent need for structured scientific training in the laboratory techniques necessary for its success. This was addressed initially through an international society dedicated to the science of IVF in 1994 – ‘Alpha – Scientists in Reproductive Medicine’ – which was registered as a charity in 1995. Our family home became ‘Alpha HQ’, and with my son Robbie’s expert IT guidance and daughter Bethany’s help with the mailings we produced quarterly newsletters of up-to-date scientific information for worldwide distribution. Many of these were translated into Spanish, Italian and Turkish, and a collection of all editions published between 1995-2001 has been lodged with the Wellcome Library in London.
In 1998 a part-time Clinical Embryology postgraduate MSc course was inaugurated at the University for Continuing Education Krems in Austria, and building on this established syllabus, a distance-learning MSc followed at the University of Leeds in 2000. Thankfully, huge progress has been made since then, and postgraduate education and formal training in the science of IVF is now available in most countries of the world. Clinical embryologists must be qualified, certified and registered with appropriate authorities before being allowed to practise human IVF. My career thus evolved into full-time education and teaching, and I wrote eight textbooks, published by Cambridge University Press, covering basic scientific principles of IVF for students of Clinical Embryology.
Current Activities
We celebrated my 40th year at Bourn Hall in 2024. In my current role as Senior Research Scientist, I continue to teach and lecture, counsel patients about ongoing research, and co-ordinate collaborations with high-level academic research laboratories in Cambridge. The Foulkes Foundation, which supported my medical studies, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and as Editor of their annual newsletter, I enjoy keeping abreast of current research and learning about all the extraordinary and significant contributions the fellows make in translating fundamental discoveries into clinical practice.
St Andrews
My five years in St Andrews were a wonderful privilege, enhancing and broadening my perspectives in many directions and dimensions. Unique history and traditions, together with the beautiful setting inspired a lively, close community of students who benefited from the experience of a wide range of performing arts: music, literature and theatre… Needless to say, finding time to devote to my biochemistry studies was a considerable challenge!
My Raisin Receipt is an exquisite, illuminated manuscript that remains a treasured possession. A museum-grade copy has been given to the Special Collections archive, and the original is a named legacy to the University.
Nearly six decades later, friendships established during those years remain amongst my closest circle of friends.
Leaving a legacy
It is a delight and an honour to enjoy a continued affiliation with St Andrews through membership of the Chancellor’s Circle. By extraordinary good fortune, all my education has been supported by grants and scholarships. Contributing towards student scholarships gives me a chance to ‘pay it forward’, and I have chosen to remember the University in my will. The Chancellor’s Circle events keep me abreast of the University’s progress as a world leader of innovation and excellence and allow me to renew a special connection to a place where, to quote the poet Andrew Lang, ‘youth and hour come back to me’.
For more information about leaving a legacy to the University of St Andrews, visit: The Chancellor’s Circle