Virginia Apgar (June 7, 1909August 7, 1974) was an American physician, obstetrical anesthesiologist and medical researcher, best known as the inventor of the Apgar Score, a way to quickly assess the health of a newborn child immediately after birth in order to combat infant mortality. In 1952, she developed the 10-point Apgar score to assist physicians and nurses in assessing the status of newborns. Given at one minute and five minutes after birth, the Apgar test measures a child's breathing, skin color, reflexes, motion, and heart rate. A friend said, "She probably did more than any other physician to bring the problem of birth defects out of back rooms." She was a leader in the fields of anesthesiology and teratology, and introduced obstetrical considerations to the established field of neonatology. Early life and education The youngest of three children, Apgar was born and raised in Westfield, New Jersey, the daughter of Helen May (Clarke) and Charles Emory Apgar. Her father was a business executive and amateur astronomer whose amateur radio work exposed an espionage ring during World War I. Her older brother died early from tuberculosis, and her other brother had a chronic illness. She graduated from Westfield High School in 1925, knowing that she wanted to be a doctor. Apgar graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1929, where she studied zoology with minors in physiology and chemistry. In 1933, she graduated fourth in her class from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S) and completed a residency in surgery at P&S in 1937. She was discouraged by Allen Whipple, the chairman of surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, from continuing her career as a surgeon because he had seen many women attempt to be successful surgeons and ultimately fail. He instead encouraged her to practice anesthesiology because he felt that advancements in anesthesia were needed to further advance surgery and felt that she had the "energy and ability" to make a significant contribution. Deciding to continue her career in anesthesiology, she trained for six months under Ralph Waters at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he had established the first anesthesiology department in the United States. In a 1937 photograph of Waters and his residents, she is the only woman among Waters and fifteen other men. She then studied for a further six months under Ernest Rovenstine in New York at Bellevue Hospital. She received a certification as an anesthesiologist