Alumna Inducted into Women's Hall of Fame

Virginia Apgar '29, assessing the health of a newborn

In October, Dr. Virginia Apgar '29 was inducted, along with seventeen other distinguished individuals, into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. A figure now familiar to millions of Americans through a recently released twenty-cent U.S. postage stamp, Apgar (1909-1974) was a physician best known for the creation of the Apgar Score, an internationally recognized test for evaluating the health of newborn infants.

The Women's Hall of Fame induction ceremonies were held in the Seneca Falls church where suffrage leader Alice Paul called for the enactment of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. Apgar joins a growing list of Mount Holyoke notables in this honor, including former Connecticut governor Ella Tambussi Grasso '40, the first woman elected governor of a state in her own right, and College founder Mary Lyon.

In 1938 Apgar was appointed director of anesthesiology at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, becoming the first woman to head a department there. In 1949 she was appointed Columbia's first full professor of anesthesiology, a field in which she was a pioneer.

In 1952 Apgar introduced the Apgar Score. Developed from her years of study of anesthesia and childbirth, the scoring system became the standard for evaluating infants immediately after birth and is used to predict which babies need medical attention during the first crucial minutes and hours of life.

Apgar received a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University in 1959, which led to an executive position with the March of Dimes Foundation. Apgar is credited with the foundation's dramatic financial growth.

An unorthodox teacher and tireless individual, Apgar's life is peppered with anecdotes that illustrate the range of her genius. She maintained a lifelong interest in music, no doubt influenced by her father who was an amateur musician and held family living-room concerts during her childhood. While at Mount Holyoke, Apgar played violin in the orchestra and acted in dramatic productions. Musically, she was also noted for designing and making handcrafted stringed instruments. Well over the age of fifty, Apgar began flying lessons and hoped to fly under New York City's George Washington Bridge one day. Apgar, who died in 1974, received many awards and honorary degrees during her lifetime.

Apgar served on the College's Board of Trustees from 1966 to 1971. Remembering her energy, Ruth Clouse, secretary/scribe for the class of 1929, said, "She was always between zoology and chemistry and interested in so many things. She was a peppy individual."

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