Celebrating Dr. Maggie Lim

Today’s Doodle celebrates Singaporean physician, professor, and public health official Dr. Maggie Lim, 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. 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, Lim made history by winning the 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. 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.

Special thanks to the family of Dr. Maggie Lim for their partnership on this project. Below her daughter, Dr. Patricia Lin, reflects on her mother’s life, legacy, and today’s Doodle: 
 

My mother Maggie Lim was a woman ahead of her time, a trailblazer who understood  that the well being of any nation begins with the release of women from subjugation: the subjugation of ignorance, ill health, impoverishment, and the inability to regulate her own fertility. In this regard the biggest gift my mother made to the world was that she was a forerunner of the women of generations to come.

Photographed: Maggie Lim
Photos Courtesy of the Lim family

Early drafts of the Doodle