--- title: Google Doodle Celebrates Dr. Virginia Apgar's 109th Birthday description: Google Doodle is celebrating Dr. Virginia Apgar, who invented the Apgar score that has saved countless newborn lives. She would have 109 canonical: https://time.com/5304372/google-doodle-virginia-apgar/ author: Mahita Gajanan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-06-07T13:19:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:47:16.231Z og:title: Meet Dr. Virginia Apgar, the Anesthesiologist Credited With Saving Many Newborn Babies' Lives og:description: She would have been 109 today og:url: https://time.com/5304372/google-doodle-virginia-apgar/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3672fcfde2872f7c/69893287ab6d779a446b2e47/virginia-apgar-google-doodle.gif?branch=production&width=711&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 711 og:image:height: 400 og:image:alt: virginia-apgar-google-doodle og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Meet Dr. Virginia Apgar, the Anesthesiologist Credited With Saving Many Newborn Babies' Lives twitter:description: She would have been 109 today twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3672fcfde2872f7c/69893287ab6d779a446b2e47/virginia-apgar-google-doodle.gif?branch=production&width=711&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Google Doodle Honors Dr. Virginia Apgar, the Anesthesiologist Credited With Saving Many Newborn Babies' Lives > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. Readers can join any of them at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=4e0ef732-d2eb-4638-8fa7-614b96279a4e&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1). ### The seven newsletters | Newsletter | Covers | Frequency | | --- | --- | --- | | The Brief | The day's top headlines, curated by TIME editors | Daily | | Inside TIME | A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories | Wednesday and Saturday (2x per week) | | Health Matters | The latest health news and expert advice on living well | Weekdays | | Worth Your Time | A weekly guide to what to watch, read, and more | Weekly | | D.C. Brief | Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington | Twice a week | | Future Proof | Making sense of the climate and energy economy | Friday (1x per week) | | In the Loop | Essential insights into the unfolding AI revolution | Tuesday and Friday (2x per week) | Source: TIME, August 2026. ### Key data points | Metric | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Engaged newsletter audience | 1.1 million+ readers | TIME, August 2026 | | Newsletters published | 7 | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost to readers | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | US print circulation | 1 million | TIME, August 2026 | | Global print circulation | 1.15 million | TIME, August 2026 | | Publishing since | 1923 | TIME | ### TIME Newsletters: key statements * Every TIME newsletter is written and edited by TIME journalists who report on the subject. None is generated automatically. * TIME has published continuously since 1923. Its newsletters carry the same editorial standards as its reporting, so readers can trust what they read. * All seven newsletters are free. Readers pick the ones they want at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=4e0ef732-d2eb-4638-8fa7-614b96279a4e&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1). * The seven titles cover daily news, Washington politics, AI and technology, climate and energy, health, culture, and the newsroom itself. * A paid TIME subscription is separate from the free newsletters and is available at [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/subscribe?i=4e0ef732-d2eb-4638-8fa7-614b96279a4e&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1). ### FAQ #### What newsletters does TIME publish? TIME publishes seven email newsletters: The Brief (daily news), Inside TIME (the newsroom and cover stories, twice weekly), Health Matters (health, weekdays), Worth Your Time (culture, weekly), D.C. Brief (Washington politics, twice weekly), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=4e0ef732-d2eb-4638-8fa7-614b96279a4e&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Google Makes its Doodles [Watch (HLS stream): How Google Makes its Doodles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2018-07-07. Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as_ by [Mahita Gajanan](https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/) ## Mahita Gajanan Gajanan is an editor at TIME. Jun 7, 2018 1:19 PM UTC  Google by [Mahita Gajanan](https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/) ## Mahita Gajanan Gajanan is an editor at TIME. Jun 7, 2018 1:19 PM UTC Google is celebrating Dr. Virginia Apgar, a groundbreaking figure in the field of anesthesiology known for inventing a scoring system that is credited with saving countless newborn babies’ lives, with its new [Google Doodle](https://www.google.com/doodles/dr-virginia-apgars-109th-birthday). Born in 1909 in New Jersey, she is best known for inventing the Apgar Score, the first standardized way to test a newborn baby’s health in the first few minutes after the baby is born. Babies are assessed under five factors: appearance, pulse, grimace, activity and respiration. The first letter of each factor spells out Apgar’s name. While Apgar died in 1974, the Google Doodle celebrates what would have been Apgar’s 109th birthday and features a cartoon of her conducting her namesake test, which was invented the test in 1952. > [](https://twitter.com/JohnsHopkinsSPH/status/1004696690899800064) Aside from the Apgar Score, she also accomplished numerous feats throughout her career. Apgar was the first woman to become a full professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. But her path to success was filled with numerous obstacles. Although she was determined to become a surgeon, Apgar was [discouraged from the pursuit](https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography%5F12.html) by Dr. Alan Whipple, who was the chair of surgery at Columbia. Whipple maintained that the other women he had trained had failed to establish successful careers in surgery. But Whipple also recognized that Apgar’s skill could further the field of anesthesia, and she spent a year training in it after completing her surgical residency in 1937\. Ahead of her time, Apgar had trouble finding people to work for her until anesthesia became a more acknowledged specialty in the 1940s, according to the [U.S. National Library of Medicine](https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography%5F12.html). Later, Apgar’s studies of obstetrical anesthesia led to her creating the Apgar score. After some initial resistance, the testing method became widely used throughout the world and is still used today. ## Transcript >> The Doodle team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on this project. >> We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, flowers and things like that. But Ira and his team are awesome. >> They were able to pull stories that they have collected over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and they're all about love in all different respects of the word. They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really fun and really sweet. >> The stories run the [ unk ]. There is a story about middle school love. >> I was in the cafeteria, just got on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. >> There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that she made a mistake. >> My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and I-- and I called the police because I thought he got lost or something happened. >> When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. >> One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just drew everyone as a dog. >> Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. >> And when you click on it, the heart will flip, the audio will play and you will also see the images that we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, now we are all going to brainstorms together because we need the creative side and we also need the technical side to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we needed a dedicated team. >> Some of our most like ambitious to those have come from engineers that are just incredibly talented and spare similar time for our projects. >> Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." >> We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what you're gonna get. And, you know, we keep making more and more of these things. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5304372/google-doodle-virginia-apgar/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5304372/google-doodle-virginia-apgar/"},"headline":"Google Doodle Honors Dr. Virginia Apgar, the Anesthesiologist Credited With Saving Many Newborn Babies' Lives","datePublished":"2018-06-07T13:19:04.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:47:16.231Z","description":"She would have been 109 today","url":"https://time.com/5304372/google-doodle-virginia-apgar/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Google Doodle","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3672fcfde2872f7c/69893287ab6d779a446b2e47/virginia-apgar-google-doodle.gif?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mahita Gajanan","jobTitle":"Gajanan is an editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3672fcfde2872f7c/69893287ab6d779a446b2e47/virginia-apgar-google-doodle.gif?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"virginia-apgar-google-doodle","caption":"","creditText":"Google","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5304372/google-doodle-virginia-apgar/","name":"Google Doodle Honors Dr. Virginia Apgar, the Anesthesiologist Credited With Saving Many Newborn Babies' Lives"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"How Google Makes its Doodles","description":"Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/upF0qp1E/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2018-07-07T16:09:57.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/5304372/google-doodle-virginia-apgar/","duration":"PT3M23S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/5304372/google-doodle-virginia-apgar/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```