Dr. Virginia Apgar, the inventor of the Apgar score, is being featured on the Google home page today on her 109th birthday. Dr. Virginia Apgar was born on June 7, 1909, in New Jersey, and in 1952 she came up with the Apgar score.
The Apgar score is a method to quickly summarize the health of newborn children against infant mortality. It is an acronym that stands for appearance, pulse, grimace, activity and respiration. You assign zero to two on each of the five values, and the highest that can be scored is a 10. It is used throughout the world and given to most babies within a few minutes of their birth.
Dr. Apgar lived for 65 years, passing from cirrhosis on August 7, 1974, in Manhattan. Her invention is still used today, 66 years later.
She was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 20¢ Great Americans series postage stamp. In November 1995, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. In 1999, she was designated a Women’s History Month Honoree by the National Women’s History Project. And now, she gets her very own Google doodle.
Here is the animated version:
