Virginia Apgar

Newborns are scored based on how alive they seem.

In the early 1950s, newborn care was practically nonexistent.

Babies were delivered.

And if they didn’t cry, didn’t move, didn’t breathe, there was no system to flag it fast.

Virginia Apgar was an anesthesiologist who had attended over 17,000 births.

And she noticed something alarming: while infant mortality was dropping, babies were still dying within minutes of being born.

So in 1952, she sketched out a simple idea during breakfast with med students: what if doctors scored newborns, right after birth, on 5 criteria?

Heart rate, breathing, muscle tone, reflexes, and skin color.

Each one scored from 0 to 2.

A total score from 0 to 10.

Today it’s called the Apgar Score.

Until her, no one had treated newborns like real patients.

Virginia became the first woman to lead a division at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital.

The first woman full professor at Columbia’s medical school.

And one of the first doctors to focus on how birth and maternal anesthesia impact babies.

In 1959, she left academia, got a Master’s in Public Health at Johns Hopkins, and joined the March of Dimes.

She wrote a bestselling book: Is My Baby All Right?

And she helped launch rubella vaccination campaigns, advocated for Rh testing, and pushed public awareness of birth defects.