Carl Axel Gemzell

[1] After training in surgery and obstetrics and gynecology he studied experimental endocrinology at the Wenner-Gren Institute and received his PhD in 1948.

Subsequently, he worked at the Institute for Experimental Biology of the University of California, Berkeley before returning to Sweden.

In 1958 Gemzell was the first to show that extracted gonadotropins containing FSH could be used as fertility medication to stimulate ovulation in women with anovulatory infertility.

[2] Gemzell's pituitary gonadotropin preparation was soon replaced by FSH extracts from urine of postmenopausal women by a method that was developed by Piero Donini and later marketed as Pergonal.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Swedish soldiers serving in Uppsala were invited to donate sperm samples, which they were told would be used for research purposes.