Google Doodle- Why Is The American Dr Virginia Apgar Being Celebrated On Her 109th Birthday?

Who is Dr Virginia Apgar?

Born in New Jersey in 1909 to a musical family, Apgar always had a keen interest in science and left school knowing she wanted to be a doctor.

She initially studied zoology, chemistry and physiology before attending Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

However, she was discouraged from pursuing surgery by Dr Allen Whipple at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center who instead advised her to study anaesthesiology.

She eventually became a leading figure in the fields of anaesthesiology and teratology.

The doctor developed a newborn infant's neonatal prognosis, known as the Apgar Score, which is taken within minutes of birth and has become standard practice in hospitals worldwide.

After starting work in New York in 1933, Dr Apgar was disturbed by the treatment of newborn babies particularly those who were malformed or had troubled breathing.

To her astonishment, infants who were blue or were struggling to breathe were listed as stillborn and left to die.

This prompted the fiercely passionate physician to develop her score, which has a range of zero to ten based on a tot’s condition.

It soon became clear that a baby with a poor rating could be resuscitated, by oxygen and warming, to a good score in around five minutes.

Thanks in part to Apgar’s work, the death rate for newborns in the US has dropped from one in 30 in the 1950s to one in 500 today.

Known for her boundless energy and sense of humour, Dr Apgar never married or had children.

She died of cirrhosis of the liver on August 7, 1974.

Why is the American doctor being celebrated by Google?

On June 6, 2018, search giant Google marked what would have been Dr Apgar’s 109th birthday with a Google Doodle.
What is a Google Doodle?

In 1998, the search engine founders Larry and Sergey drew a stick figure behind the second 'o' of Google as a message to that they were out of office at the Burning Man festival and with that, Google Doodles were born.

The company decided that they should decorate the logo to mark cultural moments and it soon became clear that users really enjoyed the change to the Google homepage.

In that same year, a turkey was added to Thanksgiving and two pumpkins appeared as the 'o's for Halloween the following year.