Chang, M.-C.

Chang, M.-C. (Min-Chueh)

(1909–91) reproductive biologist; born in Taiyuan, China. Emigrating to England to study animal husbandry at Cambridge University, he received a degree in animal husbandry from the University of Edinburgh (1939) with a concentration on artificial insemination. After earning a doctorate at Cambridge (1945), he joined the staff of the fledgling Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Worcester, Mass., where he began work with Dr. Gregory Pincus and Dr. John Rock on creation of an oral contraceptive for women. The birth control pill was ready for human testing (1956) and was marketed as Enovid (1960). Chang is also credited for the discovery of in vitro fertilization through work he conducted in the 1950s, as well as a process known as the capacitation of sperm. He was named to the National Academy of Sciences (1990).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.