Google doodle celebrates work of Lucy Wills, a pioneering prenatal researcher on her 131st birthday

News Bharati    10-May-2019
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New Delhi, May 10: Today, all the pregnant women should thank one lady for their healthy babies and a healthy pregnancy. Yes.. because today world is celebrating Lucy Will’s 131st Birthday.

 

To celebrate her contribution to pre-natal research, Google doodle honored her with a cute colorful doodle. Wills is known for her pioneering work in prenatal prevention of anemia in pregnant women using folic acid.

She endeavored the experiment that led to the discovery of folic acid, by adding yeast extract to the diets of rats and then monkeys.

Lucy Wills, born on 10 May 1988 in Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham in the UK, Lucy Wills changed the face of preventive prenatal care for women all over the world after her analysis of prenatal anemia.

Wills joined the Cheltenham College for Young Ladies, where she studied in science and mathematics. In 1911, she earned her first honors in Botany and Geology from the Cambridge University's Newnham College. After which she trained as a doctor at the London School of Medicine for Women, the first school in Britain to train female doctors. Wills also traveled to India at a point of time in her career to studying some severe cases of life-threatening anemia threatening lives of pregnant textile workers in Mumbai.

The folic acid extract, which she discovered, was named the Wills Factor and is now recommended to pregnant women for the prenatal prevention of anemia and other conditions.

After, this unparallel contribution in Science, Lucy Wills died on April 16, 1964.