New Jersey-native Virginia Apgar graduated fourth in her class from Columbia University and in 1938, became the first woman to head a department at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, according to Jone Johnson Lewis’ ThoughtCo article in November 2017.
While working as a professor of anesthesiology at Columbia University, Apgar made medical breakthroughs that increased infant survival rates in the US. She developed a procedure (the Apgar Newborn Scoring System) that checked a baby’s heart rate, breathing, skin tone, and muscles. She also discovered that injecting a mother with certain anesthetics harmed the unborn infant. Thanks to Apgar’s research, physicians stopped using these drugs.
After earning a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1959, Apgar devoted the rest of her career to preventing birth defects. She helped raise funds for medical research, lectured at colleges, and served with several public health organizations, including the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now the March of Dimes), according to Changing the Face of Medicine.
