Jean Marian Purdy (25 April 1945 – 16 March 1985) was a British nurse, embryologist and pioneer of fertility treatment.

She was responsible with Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe for developing in vitro fertilisation (IVF); Louise Joy Brown, the first "test-tube baby", was born on 25 July 1978, and Purdy was the first to see the embryonic cells dividing.

[3] She attended Cambridgeshire High School for Girls between 1956 and 1963[4] where she became a prefect, joined sports teams and played violin in the orchestra.

She later transferred to Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire where the first open-heart surgeries (and later, heart transplants) were pioneered in Britain.

[2] In 1968, Edwards began to collaborate with obstetrician and gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe, who had introduced laparoscopy (a minimally invasive surgical procedure performed in the abdomen) for gynaecology in the United Kingdom.

[2] Purdy began her work with Steptoe and Edwards as a lab technician,[6] with the aim of developing in vitro fertilisation (IVF; in which an egg is combined with sperm outside the living organism).

[9] She played a significant and increasingly vital role, to the extent that, when she took time off to care for her sick mother, work had to pause.

During this time the team endured criticism and hostility from the national funding agency Medical Research Council (MRC), who saw the Cambridge institution’s clinical facilities as problematic.

[21][2] Despite being a central figure in the development of IVF, Purdy's contributions were largely forgotten by the public and scientific community.

[6] In his 1989 autobiography Edwards maintained Purdy's importance and described the core team as a "threesome".

[31] University College London's award for the MRes (Master of Research) Reproductive Science and Women's Health is named after Purdy.

[32] Purdy, Edwards, and Steptoe's work was dramatised in Gareth Farr's 2024 play A Child of Science, which premiered at the Bristol Old Vic.

[33][34] Also in 2024, Purdy was portrayed by Thomasin McKenzie in the biographical drama film Joy, which similarly follows the development of IVF.