First director of the Centre for Regenerative Medicine. Name: Ian WilmutCategory: Previous staffRole: First Director of the Centre for Regenerative MedicineTime active with Edinburgh Medical School: 1973 until retirement. A world-renowned embryologist, Ian is best known for leading the team that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996. Born in Warwickshire, England in 1944, Ian studied agriculture and animal science at the University of Nottingham before undertaking a PhD at the University of Cambridge. He began work at the Roslin Institute in Scotland in 1973, developing projects with reproductive cells that eventually led to the birth of Dolly. The cloning technique involved taking DNA from an adult cell and transferring it to an egg cell where DNA had been removed. Dolly was the first mammal successfully cloned from an adult cell, creating new possibilities in stem cell science and genetic modification. In 2006, Ian became the first director for the University of Edinburgh’s newly-established Centre for Regenerative Medicine. He was appointed OBE in 1999 and was knighted in 2008. Despite rarely seeking the limelight, Ian readily engaged in discussions on the ethics and limitations of cloning. This article was published on 2026-03-18
