Google honors Dame Jean Macnamara, whose polio research helped lead to vaccine
Google is honoring the birth of an Australian doctor whose work helped lead to a vaccine for polio.
Dame Jean Macnamara was born on April 1, 1899 in Victoria, Australia, according to a Google post celebrating her achievements.
Macnamara graduated medical school in 1925 during a polio epidemic in Melbourne. It was then she chose to dedicate her work toward treating and researching the virus.
In 1931, she worked to discover there was more than one strain of poliovirus with Sir Macfarlane Burnet, who would later win the Nobel Prize for his work into immune tolerance (shared with British immunologist Peter Medawar). The research lead to the creation of a polio vaccine in 1955.
In 1935, she was proclaimed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).
The doodle created by Sydney-based artist Thomas Campi features a young Macnamara treating a young patient suffering from polio.
"My cousin has struggled with Polio all his life, so I feel a lot of appreciation and gratitude to people like Dame Jean Macnamara," said Campi in a statement.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dame Jean Macnamara: Google Doodle honors Australian doctor
