American pediatrician who created a scale for assessing newborn infant health.

Virginia Apgar graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1929 and earned her M.D. degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1933. Although she spent her first two years in a surgical internship, Dr. Apgar elected to enter the growing field of anesthesiology. In 1949 she was appointed the first full professor of anesthesiology at Columbia. That same year, after building the department and training program, Dr. Apgar gave up her administrative duties as head of the anesthesiology department and turned to the study of anesthesia and its role in childbirth, assisting in the births of more than 17,000 infants during her career at Columbia.

Apgar published a system for the assessment of newborn health status in 1953. The scoring system that bears her name employs a ten point score based on two...