Winston, Robert Maurice Lipson (1940– )

English doctor, politician, and television personality. A reproductive specialist, he has presented several award-winning science programmes for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In 1995 he became a life peer and served as Chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology 1998–2001.

An expert in human fertility, he developed several techniques in reproductive surgery, in-vitro fertilization (IVF), and embryo testing for genetic defects. He became well known for presenting several BBC series, for example The Human Body (1998) and Child of Our Time (2000–2020), which explores the relationship between genetics and environment by following the growth a variety of people born in 2000. He explored evolution in the documentary Walking with Cavemen (2003) and DNA in Threads of Life (2003).

Winston was born in London and educated at St Paul's School and London University's London Hospital Medical College. He worked at Hammersmith Hospital, London, and was a professor of medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium; the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London; the University of Texas, San Antonio, USA; and the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (now part of Imperial College), London. He became Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University in 2001 and was president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 2004–05. Other television series include The Secret Life of Twins (1999), Superhuman (2001), Human Instinct (2002), and A Child Against All Odds (2006).