Google honors polio expert Dame Jean Macnamara with new Doodle

April 1 (UPI) -- Google is celebrating medical scientist and polio expert Dame Jean Macnamara with a new Doodle on what would have been her 121st birthday.

Macnamara studied various forms of paralysis, including polio, during her career. Her work helped with the development of the polio vaccine in 1955.

Google's homepage features artwork of Macnamara helping a patient on crutches by Sydney-based artist Thomas Campi.

Macnamara was born in Victoria, Australia, in 1899 and graduated from medical school in 1925, the same year that Melbourne was hit with a polio epidemic.

She worked with future Nobel Prize winner Sir Macfarlane Burnet and discovered that there was more than one strain of the poliovirus in 1931. Macnamara continued to work with those who suffered from the disease, developing new methods of treatment and rehabilitation for the rest of her life.

Macnamara was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1935 and also played a role in using myxomatosis to control rabbit plagues.