New Delhi Google on Friday honoured the life and work of English haematologist Lucy Wills, whose pioneering research led to the creation of a prenatal vitamin that helps birth defects, with a doodle on what would have been her 131st birthday.
Wills was born in England in 1888 and completed a degree in botany and geology at the prestigious Cambridge University in 1911. However, only in 1914 Wills became involved in medicine after she volunteered as a nurse in Cape Town when the first World War broke out. Upon her return to London, Wills received her medical degree from the London School of Medicine for Women.
Her major achievement in the field of medicine is the discovery of vitamin folic acid — a man-made form of folate, a B-vitamin found naturally in dark green vegetables and citrus fruits, which plays an important role in the creation of red blood cells. The folic acid when taken by women before and during pregnancy, helps check birth defects in the baby's brain and spinal cord.
Thus, today pregnant women around the world have Lucy Wills to thank for the crucial research that prevented birth defects.
Further, in 1928, Wills had travelled to India to investigate a severe form of anaemia that was affecting pregnant textile workers in erstwhile Bombay and in 1931 she published a paper about her research on the same.
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