Wilmut, Ian (1944-...), is the British scientist who led the team that created Dolly, the sheep whose 1996 birth was hailed throughout the world as a milestone in cloning. Cloning is using laboratory methods to create animals or groups of cells that have exactly the same genes (hereditary instructions). Dolly was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell of another animal, a feat many scientists thought impossible before Wilmut succeeded.