Ernest John Christopher Polge (16 August 1926 – 17 August 2006) was an English biologist, most noted for his work in

cryopreservation Cryo-preservation or cryo-conservation is a process where Organism, organisms, organelles, cell (biology), cells, Biological tissue, tissues, extracellular matrix, Organ (anatomy), organs, or any other biological constructs susceptible to damage ...

. The son of a Buckinghamshire farmer, he was educated at

Bootham School Bootham School is an independent Quaker boarding school, on Bootham in the city of York in England. It accepts boys and girls ages 3–19, and had an enrolment of 605 pupils in 2016. It is one of seven Quaker schools in England. The school ...

in York, before going to the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

where he studied Agriculture, graduating with an Ordinary degree. He worked briefly as an agricultural economist before joining the Division of Experimental Biology at the

National Institute for Medical Research The National Institute for Medical Research (commonly abbreviated to NIMR), was a medical research institute based in Mill Hill, on the outskirts of north London, England. It was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC); In 2016, the NIMR b ...

at Mill Hill, London, and later the Animal Research Station at Cambridge, where he worked under Sir John Hammond It was while a doctoral student that he solved the long-standing problem of how to preserve living cells and tissues at very low temperatures. 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. After the Animal Research Station closed in 1986, Polge co-founded Animal Biotechnology Cambridge Ltd., where he was also Scientific Director, to translate basic and applied research into commercial agricultural processes and products. He was also a Fellow of Wolfson College from 1984 to 1993 (Emeritus Fellow after) Polge was elected to the Royal Society in 1983, won the 1988 Wolf Foundation Prize in Agriculture, and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992. He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences as a foreign associate in 1997.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Polge, Christopher 1926 births 2006 deaths People from Buckinghamshire Alumni of the University of Reading English biologists Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Society Wolf Prize in Agriculture laureates National Institute for Medical Research faculty People educated at Bootham School Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences 20th-century biologists