Google Pays Homage To First Indian Woman Doctor With A Doodle

Google paid homage to Rukhmabai Raut, India's first woman to practice medicine in colonial India on Wednesday. It marked her birth anniversary with a doodle.

The Google Doodle — a gentle-looking portrait of Rukhmabai Raut with a stethoscope on her neck with hospital beds in the backdrop.

Rukhmabai was born in a family of carpenters on November 1864 in Bombay (now Mumbai) in colonial India.

At a time when women in India were rarely given importance, she was married off to one Dadaji Bhikaji at the age of eleven. Her mother Jayantibai — who became a widow at the age of 17, had married an eminent physician and the founding member of Bombay Natural History Society.

Rukhmabai lived with her mother and step-father. Later in 1888, she legally separated from her husband. Dr. Edith Pechey of Bombay’s Cama Hospital supported her to complete her course in the London School of Medicine for Women. In 1894, she returned to India. She practised medicine in Surat, Rajkot and Bombay for 35 years. She breathed her last on September 25, 1955.