Google doodle honors Dr. Maggie Lim, first Singaporean to win Queen’s Scholarship!

Google doodle on February 14, 2022, to celebrate Singaporean physician, professor, and public health official Dr. Maggie Lim.

Dr. Maggie Lim was the first young woman in Singapore and second Singaporean ever to win the prestigious Queen’s Scholarship in the 45 years of the award’s history. On this day in 2014, Dr. Lim was posthumously inducted into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame.

Maggie Lim, née Tan, was born in January 1913 in Singapore in a prominent family, the daughter of businessman Tan Kwee Swee,  granddaughter of businessman Tan Kim Ching, and great-granddaughter of Chinese philanthropist Tan Tock Seng.

She began her studies at Raffles Girls’ School, where she excelled in academics with a record six distinctions in her Senior Cambridge examinations. In 1929, she entered the then all-men’s Raffles Institution in preparation for the Queen’s Scholarship examination.

In 1930, she was the first Singaporean schoolgirl to win a Queen's Scholarship. She left home to attend the London School of Medicine for Women, one of the city’s only training hospitals that exclusively trained women. After years of dedicated study, Lim joined the Royal College of Surgeons and earned her physician's license. She returned to home in 1940 and served her community with a specialization in maternity and child health, helping to establish a system of specialized clinics across Singapore.

In 1963, Dr. Maggie Lim contributed her experience from a lifetime of fieldwork as the head of the Ministry of Health's Maternity and Child Welfare Department before retiring from this position to teach epidemiology and public health at the University of Hawaii for the remainder of her career.

Source: Google doodles