10/13/2025
Until 1952, when Virginia Apgar created the Apgar test, no test existed to measure the health of newborns following delivery. Apgar’s medical innovation was the first systemized process to assess infants’ health and diagnose any potential immediate life-saving treatments after birth.
After graduating from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1933 as one of nine women in a ninety-person class, she began practicing anesthesiology, a relatively new field at the time. She noticed a major need for improvements for obstetric patients and newborn babies.
The Apgar test was a simple system for evaluating the condition of newly delivered infants that tracked five observations within one minute of birth—appearance, pulse, grimace, activity, and respiration. Her research saved hundreds of thousands of lives and altered modern medical history. Thanks to Apgar, child or maternal mortality got noticed and included in the development of medical practice and technology in the United States.
Apgar’s accomplishments span far, as she was the only woman resident during her residency at the University of Wisconsin, and later became the director of the department of anesthesiology at Columbia and their first full-rank woman professor.
She later served as the Chief of the Division of Congenital Malformations for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, touring around the country, and even appearing on television and newspapers, to educate expectant mothers. She also went on to found the first Committee on Perinatal Health to improve maternal health and limit infant mortality.
Apgar’s neonatal care and public health work has established her as one of the most important and revolutionary women in American medical research. Her work has saved upwards of millions of lives today.
Learn more about Apgar in our newly-published biography: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/virginia-apgar
