Scientists had gained a fair understanding of the cellular genesis processes when they decided to turn their knowledge into a practical field, the cloning of animals. The process was developed in 1938 by a German scientist, who replaced the nuclei of cells in an unfertilized egg with those from a specialized cell such as skin or liver. Scientists had previously used this method to make clones from embryonic cells, that still had the capability of becoming any type of specialized cell. Cloning from the cells of an adult was a step up in magnitude of difficulty.

On this day, July 5, in 1996, Dolly the sheep was born at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, Scotland. Ian Wilmut led the team of scientists that implanted genetic material from an udder cell from one sheep into the hollowed-out egg of another, then transferring the embryo into a surrogate mother sheep.

Scientists announced Dolly several months after her birth. At one interview when Dr Wilmut was asked about the sheep’s name, and answered it was in honor of the curvaceous country singer: “Dolly is derived from a mammary gland cell and we couldn’t think of a more impressive pair of glands than Dolly Parton’s.”