Sir Martin John Evans FRS FMedSci FLSW (born 1 January 1941) is an English biologist[5] who, with Matthew Kaufman, was the first to culture mice embryonic stem cells and cultivate them in a laboratory in 1981.

[6][7] In 2007, the three shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of their discovery and contribution to the efforts to develop new treatments for illnesses in humans.

[8][9][10][11][12] He won a major scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge at a time when advances in genetics were occurring there and became interested in biology and biochemistry.

[citation needed] He then went to University College London where he learned laboratory skills supervised by Elizabeth Deuchar.

[9] Evans won a major scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge, at a time when there were many advances in genetics being made.

[14] He moved to University College London where he had a fortunate position as a research assistant, learning laboratory skills under Dr Elizabeth Deuchar.

[15][1][6][16] He became a lecturer in the Anatomy and Embryology department at University College London, where he did research and taught PhD students and undergraduates.

[17] After Kaufman left to take up a professorship in Anatomy in Edinburgh, Evans continued his work, branching out eclectically, "drawn into a number of fascinating fields of biology and medicine.

"[11] In October 1985, he visited the Whitehead Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts, for one month of practical work to learn the most recent laboratory techniques.

In 1999, he became Professor of Mammalian Genetics and Director of the School of Biosciences at Cardiff University,[6][19] where he worked until he retired at the end of 2007.

[22] In 2007, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies for their work in discovering a method for introducing homologous recombination in mice employing embryonic stem cells.

[29] In some chimeric embryos, the genetically altered stem cells produced gametes, thus allowing transmission of the artificially induced mutation into future generations of mice.

[26] The production of transgenic mice using this proposed approach was accomplished in the laboratories of Oliver Smithies,[32] and of Mario Capecchi.