By Clay Risen and Amanda Holpuch – The New York Times
Ian Wilmut, the British scientist who led the project that cloned a mammal for the first time, Dolly the sheep, shocking scientists who had thought that such a procedure was impossible, died on Sunday. He was 79.
The Roslin Institute, a research center near Edinburgh where Dr. Wilmut had worked for decades, said in a statement that the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease. It did not say where he died.
Dr. Wilmut and his team were catapulted into headlines worldwide in February 1997, when they announced their ovine subject’s remarkable birth in the journal Nature.