Folic Acid Discoverer Lucy Wills Gets Honoured By Google Doodle

Folic Acid Discoverer Lucy Wills Gets Honoured By Google Doodle

Google today (Friday) honoured English hematologist Lucy Wills whose analysis on anaemia in pregnant women in Mumbai in 1928 led to the invention of folic acid that helps prevent birth defects in babies. She conducted seminal work in India within the late 1920s and early 1930s on macrocytic anaemia throughout pregnancy.

Lucy Wills observations throughout the analysis on pregnant textile worker in Mumbai to the invention of an organic process consider yeast which both prevents and cures this disorder.

The extract, later identified as folic acid, improved the health of the monkeys throughout the analysis which was named the Wills Factor. Macrocytic anaemia is characterized by enlarged red blood cells and may be a life-threatening condition. Wills’ discovery changed preventive antenatal look after women globally. Folic acid is a sort of folate -- a B-vitamin found naturally in dark green vegetables and citrus fruits.

Born near to Birmingham, England, in 1888, “Wills attended three schools that benefited from an additional progressive approach to education, the first being Cheltenham college for Young women, a British boarding school training female students in science and mathematics”, reports by a media website.

In 1915, she enrolled at the London School of Medicine for women and become a legally qualified health care provider in 1920, earning bachelor degrees in medicine and science. The USA Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends that every woman of child-bearing age take 400 micrograms of folic acid daily.

For many years it was the Wills Factor till folic acid was named in 1941 when it was absolutely isolated from spinach. Google Honoured with a Doodle on her 131st birth anniversary, Wills died in April 1964.

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