LONDON — Two male British scientists gained worldwide fame as the developers of in vitro fertilization, but both viewed a woman, Jean Purdy, as an equal partner in the breakthrough, records made public on Monday show. One of the male scientists, Dr. Robert Edwards, tried to have her work recognized, but instead it has gone largely unknown for four decades.

“I regard her as an equal contributor to Patrick Steptoe and myself,” Dr. Edwards wrote in a letter to Oldham Health Authority in 1981, adding that Dr. Steptoe had also acknowledged Ms. Purdy’s role in a book published by the two male scientists.

Dr. Edwards’s letter was among the papers released on Monday from the archives of the University of Cambridge, where Dr. Edwards was a professor of physiology. Ms. Purdy, a nurse and embryologist, traveled with him for 10 years to Oldham, in northern England, where they worked on the in vitro effort, he wrote, “and contributed as much as I did to the project.”

When he wrote that, officials were preparing to install a plaque in Oldham to mark the birth in 1978 of Louise Brown, the world’s first “test tube” baby.