Most of the following research and information about BPW’s work in the field of female reproduction was compiled by David Hall ( Emeritus Professor of community paediatrics at the Institute of General Practice and Primary Care, University of Sheffield) in 2023. The original document is also available as File:Wiesner pathway as pioneer v2.pdf. His comments are included. David wanted to find out exactly how BPW’s research on sex hormones may have laid the foundations and consequently contributed to the development of oral contraception and HRT. He writes: “It has not been an easy investigation. I have now been able to obtain most of the key papers except for one (or possibly two) dating from what were presumably Wiesner’s “postgraduate” student projects, as so far the journal abbreviations do not match any available journal. Assuming that the dates I have found are correct, there was a remarkably rapid progression from his work in Vienna (reported in 1925 so probably done in 1923 or 1924) to being recruited to Edinburgh in 1928. There would not have been any slick abstracting systems like those we have now, but of course there were far fewer scientific journals circulating at the time, so perhaps it was not too difficult to keep up with research results from other academic centres like Vienna.” The first paper that is referenced is in 1928, from work probably done while he was still in Vienna: In Nature March 31 1928: 121:3048, 498-9. Wiesner states that he was “the first to demonstrate that pregnancy could be interrupted by injection of the “oestrous” hormone.” (Biol Ges zu Wien, December 7th 1925 ref. Is still elusive), and he refers to work by Steinach, Heinlein and Wiesner (Pflugers Arch 1925, ccx 598), using material derived from that work. This work is referenced by Allen and Doisy (Ovarian and placental hormones: Physiol Reviews October 1, 1927.).
In 1928, BPW was appointed to the position of head of Sex Physiology by animal geneticist Francis Crew, Professor of Animal Genetics at the newly established Institute of Animal Genetics (IAG) within the University of Edinburgh. (In 1920 Sharpey-Schafer had approached Francis Crew, asking him to run the newly created animal breeding research station in Edinburgh, and in 1928 Crew was created the first Professor of Animal Genetics at the University of Edinburgh: known as the Buchanan chair, it was indirectly funded by the Rockefeller Foundation). A new building on the Kings Buildings site was then set up, opening in 1930, and this is where BPW worked. At the same time, the Department became an integral part of the University with a new Animal Breeding Committee advising on the management of the Department. Under Crew's leadership, research in the fields of reproductive physiology and genetics was encouraged to develop side by side as a facet of scientific animal breeding. It is worth noting that a number of notable scientists conducted research at the IAG, including physiologist John Scott Haldane, zoologist Lancelot Hogben and evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley. It was there that BPW built upon the work of Zondek and Ascheim by examining the production and role of hormones during fertilization and pregnancy. Zondek and Aschheim had thought that the hormone chorionic gonadotrophin was produced by the putuitary gland, but the research conducted at the IAG proved that it is secreted by the placenta. In 1929 Crew and BPW created a Pregnancy Diagnosis Laboratory, which by 1939 was conducting ten thousand pregnancy tests per year, testing samples sent by medical practitioners or private individuals from all over the UK. This Laboratory was the first of its kind in Britain and was set up under Crew as a tangential area of public benefit, linked to their research at the Institute. Crew reported on the first year of the service in the BMJ (1930, April 5, 662-3), writing: “…. a year ago my colleague Dr. B. P. Wiesner convinced me that for several reasons it was desirable to examine on a large scale the pregnancy diagnosis tool of Zondek and Aschheim. It was out of this suggestion that the Pregnancy Diagnosis Station/Laboratory emerged, the conduct of which has very largely been in hands of Dr. E. M. Robertson,. working under the supervision of Dr. Wiesner.” (Lancet 1928 ii 834 ‘Diagnosis of early pregnancy’ by RW Johnstone (Gynaecology Dept, Edinburgh University)
What was known about female hormones around the time BPW started his lab career? The earliest report appears in Fosbery W.H.: (Severe climacteric flushings successfully treated with ovarian extract. BMJ. 1897;1:1039). In 1903 Ludwig Fraenkel (Archiv für Gynäkologie, 1903) had become the first person to describe the human corpus luteum, a glandular mass found in the ovaries of a female during menstruation that has important endocrine functions. Fraenkel also named the hormone progesterone (which the corpus luteum secretes in addition to oestrogen): “The function of the corpus luteum: From the year 1901 I reported on experiments which revealed the previously unknown function of the corpus luteum. …. The late Breslau embryologist Gustav Born proposed… that the corpus luteum verum graviditatis mass, according to its structure and development, is a gland with internal secretion, equipped with the function of causing the settlement and development of the fertilized egg in the uterus.” In 1923, Edgar Allen, a reproductive physiologist, was studying the role of follicular fluids obtained from the ovary of sows on uterine weight, vaginal maturation, and sexual receptivity. Allen provided follicular fluid from sows and Doisy purified the estrogenic activity. The biologic endpoint, uterine weight, was later called the Allen-Doisy test. (Purification of oestrogen, involving three key investigators, Edgar Allen, Edward Doisy, and Adolph Butenandt. ) Meanwhile, Selmar Aschheim and Bernard Zondek, working in Germany, demonstrated large amounts of estrogenic activity in the urine of pregnant women. With this biological material as a source, Doisy crystallized estrone : “the potency of these crystals is so great that one gram could restore the sex cycle in more than nine million rats” (1929). In Nature March 23 1929: page 449: the “alpha- hormone” labelled Oestrin was described. BPW then developed the role of the “beta -hormone” and set out the experimental basis for a second hormone (this is probably the same as that which Fraenkel had categorised as progesterone). In 1930, in the Edinburgh Medical Journal, 37:2, 73, he presented a paper on the separation of the “kyogenic” hormone from human placenta (? = progesterone). He had a paper in The Eugenics Review (1930 22: 19-26) regarding hormones and control of the reproductive system. This clarified the current state of knowledge, and also emphasised differences between experimental animals such as mice and primates including humans. “…There are at least two such hormones and they are, in mouse and rat, liberated in succession. During the first phase of ovarian secretion, which precedes ovulation, oestrin is produced. …. Its injection into ovariotomized mice, in which no sex cycle occurs in the absence of any ovarian hormone, causes the complete series of the oestrous changes. The animals mate under its influence and also display the anatomical conditions of oestrus. During the second phase of ovarian secretion which follows ovulation there is produced another ovarian hormone, kythin or progestin, which is responsible for the changes in the uterus permissive of pregnancy development”.
Crew and Wiesner jointly published in the BMJ, 777, in 1930, regarding the existence of a pituitary hormone that regulates thyroid production of thyroxine; now known as TSH – thyroid stimulating hormone. In 1931 they elegantly discussed previous experiments and their own, regarding the question of whether the pituitary produces one or two hormones that regulate the sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone, correctly concluding that there are two (these pituitary hormones are now known to be FSH – follicle stimulating hormone; LH – luteinizing hormone: Proc Roy Soc Edin 50: 79-103).
Zondek and Aschheim had thought that the hormone chorionic gonadotrophin was produced by the pituitary gland. But the research conducted at the IAG proved that it is secreted by the placenta. Some notes taken from an email from Jesse Olszynko-Gryn include comments from Francis Crew regarding his association with BPW: “I introduced a section of endocrinology, and I got a man called Bertold Wiesner from Vienna to come and help me – a very bright young man, Viennese, more artist than scientist, if you can distinguish between the two, I don’t think there’s much difference between the two – and he did some really first-class work. Amongst other things, he helped me – or I helped him, I suppose I should say – to organise a Pregnancy Diagnosis Station, the first in this country. Yes, there was quite a lot of rat work done. Wiesner was the rat man really, rat and mouse, I worked on the fowl, ageing and things like that. Wiesner wasn’t really interested in either animal genetics or animal breeding, he was interested in pure physiology, endocrinology, I mean he was purely...and his interests were not aligned in any way with ours. So that I wasn’t particularly happy to see the development take that particular line and I wasn’t very unhappy when it came to an end, because I couldn’t see where it was going at all. It was more, far more appropriate to a department of obstetrics or physiology. Although I wanted reproductive physiology, I did want it to have some, not direct, but some bearing upon problems of the animal breeders, I mean, twinning in sheep or cattle or something of that sort.’' The following references in the British Medical Journal relate to BPW’s work during those years in Edinburgh: Wiesner: BMJ 1931, 860 (2nd year, including a discussion of false positive and false negative results and communications with Dr Aschheim); Wiesner: BMJ 1932, 759 (3rd year; more data, other test options, also a reference to possibility of preventing spontaneous abortion in Lancet 3rd Sept p.509 1932); Wiesner: BMJ 1933, 296 (4th year) – More data, with improved accuracy. “This year's " errors " again contain several cases in which a "negative" diagnosis with definite clinical signs of pregnancy was followed by spontaneous abortion. The data are now sufficiently numerous to justify more detailed investigation; this is now in progress, and the results will be published shortly.” (Aschheim and Zondek had developed the A-Z test; a substance present only in the urine of pregnant women could elicit a measurable response; injection of a woman’s urine into an immature female mouse makes a young mouse will go into heat. The substance was actually HCG, Human chorionic gonadotrophin. Ettinger, G. H., G. L. M. Smith, and E. W. McHenry. “The Diagnosis of Pregnancy with the Aschheim-Zondek Test.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 24 (1931): 491–2. Evans, Herbert, and Miriam Simpson. “Aschheim-Zondek Test for Pregnancy–Its Present Status.” California and Western Medicine 32 (1930): 145. ) In 1929, BPW visited Montreal, where he discussed with some scientists the possibility of using medicine derived from female hormones to delay menopause. Subsequently, the scientists helped form the company Ayerst, McKenna and Harrison, Ltd (later, Wyeth) who marketed Premarin, a controversial hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drug based on pregnant mare's urine. (The following comment is from David Hall with some unanswered questions regarding this visit: “I have not yet found any documentary evidence of this/these visits – maybe via company records? Did he see the full commercial potential for HRT and Oral contraception? Did he invest in the company / companies?”)
BPW’s post in Edinburgh was apparently funded or part-funded by an anonymous donor in Canada. This funding ceased in 1934 and the University was unable or unwilling to maintain his post. Crew wrote a long paper in 1939 on pregnancy tests but BPW is not a co-author nor is there any reference to him. It seems as if he did not produce much in the way of ground-breaking research during the period 1933-1939, possibly due to personal/family reasons. His name re- appears in papers co-authored with Mary Barton, from the early 1940’s and it is possible that he also co-authored several published papers with John Yudkin and other colleagues. David Hall writes that BPW “was obviously not by any means the only scientist working in this field, but his lab work and his clear analysis of his own and others’ data confirms his status as an important contributor on the distinction and relationships between the various hormones. So far, it has been impossible to work out just how many of his insights were entirely original. His work with the pregnancy testing station was also valuable both as a practical service to women and in setting baseline standards for future pregnancy diagnostic services; his analysis of false positive and false negative results was vital in developing and sustaining the service – for which a charge was of course made and no doubt supported the other work of the organisation”.
While he was still working at the Institute of Animal Genetics, BPW resumed his earlier research into the prevention of pregnancy which probably contributed to the formulation of a reliable oral contraceptive for women. In addition, he collaborated with Kenneth Walker, a urological surgeon at the Royal Northern Hospital, where they had some success in artificially inseminating women with sperm from anonymous donors in cases where the patient's husband was either impotent or infertile. At the same time, Mary Barton (an obstetrician working at the Royal Free Hospital in London) had also had success with using artificial insemination with a few patients. In 1945, BPW collaborated with Kenneth Walker and Mary Barton on a paper for the British Medical Journal, describing their technique of human artificial insemination. This publication led to a very public condemnation from the Archbishop of Canterbury, who wanted to make artificial insemination illegal, calling it ‘the work of the devil’. In fact, the law was ambiguous and consequently the work of Barton and Wiesner continued in secrecy, and their patients were counselled to tell nobody about their treatment (quite possibly a number of women did not fully understand the procedure. BPW and Mary Barton had married in 1943 and they ran her fertility clinic in London together for the next 20 years until he retired. It is estimated that she (or they) successfully inseminated at least 1500 women. Ostensibly, the sperm donations were anonymous or at least unidentified, and the patients were only told that the donor would be a professional man who had already had at least one child, but in fact DNA evidence shows that the majority of the sperm was provided by BPW himself, and perhaps about 200 donations came from the neuroscientist Derek Richter. Jonathan, his son, underwent DNA testing in 2007 which provided a basis for identification. As of 2025, more than 50 confirmed offspring of BPW have been definitely identified. We do not know exactly how many donor conceived children were born as all the clinic records were destroyed. In their 1945 paper in the British Medical Journal, Barton and fellow authors Walker and Wiesner explained that they used a "small panel of donors" that they considered of "intelligent stock". It is unclear whether Barton knew (at that time at least) that much of the sperm used came from her husband. She kept records of donors identified only with code names. Documentary filmmaker Barry Stevens, (who was responsible, with David Gollanz, for finding out about the large number of sperm donations made by BPW) has stated: "it's possible he didn't tell his wife and she believed the donations were coming from a lot of different men", as it seems that BPW was the person mainly responsible for recruiting donors for the clinic. At that time, they would have assumed that after the destruction of the clinic's records, the parentage of the children conceived at the clinic would be untraceable. They could not have foreseen the implications of the discovery of DNA, let alone the impact of direct to consumer DNA testing. Regardless, as a scientist specialising in fertility (among other areas), BPW should certainly have been aware that there were genetic risks created by his fathering so many children.
The following table shows some (if not all) the papers that Mary Barton and BPW jointly published from 1945 to 1952: