He also moved the firm's headquarters from Eindhoven, Philips's birthplace and the home of its main research laboratory, to Amsterdam, as a signal that the firm's sights were set on the market place and not the oscilloscope.

ECONOMIST: Philips

But that has now changed, with the preservation of several hundred such atoms for several minutes by Jeffrey Hangst and his colleagues at CERN, the main European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva.

ECONOMIST: Fundamental physics

Two main techniques have been shown to work in the laboratory, by using a donor embryo or a donor egg.

BBC: 'Three people, one baby' public consultation begins