Sammy Lee

Sammy Lee (born Samuel Lee, 1958 – 21 July 2012) was an expert on fertility and in vitro fertilisation

In 2010, Willing to Die for It, Lee's biography by Frances Lynn was published by Murray Print.

Professor Sammy Lee arranged a conference co-sponsored by the Progress Educational Trust entitled '21st Century Motherhood' at the University College London (UCL) (18 September 2009). Speakers included Peter Brinsden, Consultant Medical Director at Bourn Hall Clinic, Professor Lord Robert Winston and Professor Shere Hite .

Lee also wrote an article in the Sunday Times (10 November 2002) in the aftermath of a number of high-profile embryo transfer mixups in several human IVF clinics.

Lee had many media appearances having been on many TV shows as well as writing a number of newspapers articles . He wrote several books of his own: such as Counselling in Male Infertility, and was also a contributor/consultant in such books: The Miraculous World of The Unborn Baby (Quadrillion, Godalming, Surrey 1998) ISBN 1-85833-966-9, Natural Fertility (Hamlyn 2002) ISBN 0-600-60396-2 and Inconceivable Conceptions.

He was a hospital scientific consultant and was the chief scientist at the Wellington IVF programme. His book Counselling in Male Infertility was published in 1996; he contributed to major newspaper articles and appeared on several current affairs television programmes. He was the "inspiration" for Anthony Ling, the character in the novel One Life by Rebecca Frayn (Simon & Schuster 2006, ISBN 0-7432-6876-8), after the author herself sought Lee's help for IVF treatment.

He had previously served as an international editor of the Brazilian Journal of Assisted Reproduction. He served as a Trustee and director of several charities. His curriculum vitae lists numerous scientific publications. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Health (now Royal Society for Public Health) and the Royal Society of Medicine, both in 1987.

Lee's team at the Wellington pioneered the first UK practise of gamete Intra-fallopian Transfer (GIFT), The GIFT of Life (a technique invented by Ricardo Asch in the USA). The team was the second to carry out GIFT and then proceeded to post the largest series in the world in 1986.

Lee became a clinical embryologist in 1985, when working with the gynaecologist Ian Craft he directed the IVF laboratory at the Wellington Hospital in London, then one of the largest units in the world. Consultancy work with the UK division of Ares Serono (1986–1994) also involved work with the Bourn Hallam Group, which Patrick Steptoe and Bob Edwards had set up after Louise Brown's birth. From 1995 to 2002 he was based at the Portland Hospital for Women & Children.

Lee originally researched his Ph.D. at UCL under the supervision of Professor Ricardo Miledi FRS in the school of Sir Bernard Katz. Lee was also a signatory to a memento presented to Sir Bernard Katz on his 80th birthday from bona fide members of the school-occasion when the phrase "School of Katz" was coined.

Lee first published research in Neuroscience during the 1980s (from the Biophysics department at UCL), having worked on nerve muscle interaction ranging from examining TTX-resistant action potentials in denervated muscle to studying cholinesterase activity in dissociated adult muscle fibres following up on the work first done in the same department by Bill Betz and Bert Sakmann. Lee changed his focus to embryos, when he realised that many of the questions framed by his Neuroscience research were rooted in the matter of differentiation. The ultimate undifferentiated cell is the fertilised egg. This led Lee to work on gap junctions in early mammalian embryos (in the Anatomy & Embryology department at UCL), where work with Anne Warner FRS and Anne McLaren DBE FRS produced new information on factors affecting communication between cells and their developmental potential.

Lee was educated at Mill Hill School and received a B.Sc. in Physiology in 1979 from Chelsea College, (later merged into King's College London). He received a Ph.D. in Biophysics from University College London under the supervision of Prof. Ricardo Miledi, in a group associated with Sir Bernard Katz. He later received a Diploma in Counselling from London Hospital Medical College in 1991, and in 2004 a PGCE at the University of Greenwich.