His scientific research focused on understanding the basic biology of development and senescence of ovaries in women, including mathematically modeling those processes.

[1] He did post-graduate work under Robert Edwards at Darwin College, Cambridge, where he graduated PhD in 1974 with a thesis on Reproductive senescence in female rodents.

[3] He left the Jones Institute in 2004 to become research director of reproductive biology at Weill Cornell Medicine, where his wife was on the faculty; part of the reason why Gosden left the institute was negative public opinion and criticism due to its creation in 2001 of an embryonic stem cell line, as was noted in a report in the journal, Science.

[10][11] In 1994, Gosden and colleagues announced that they had successfully restored fertility to and achieved two live births in sheep through ovarian tissue autotransplantation, one of which had been frozen then thawed.

[18][19] He spoke out against the controversial claims made by OvaScience, a company founded in 2012, that it could help older women conceive using putative oogonial stem cells.