136 years ago was born George Papanicolaou, the man who invented the Pap

One day as today, May 13, 1883, was born George Papanicolaou, the man who, with his partner, invented Pap, "one of the most powerful weapons against cancer" .

Papanicolaou arrived in the United States from Greece as an experienced doctor who served as a military surgeon during the first war in the Balkans.

They immigrated to the north of the country without knowing, neither he nor his wife, speak English, and they had barely 250 US dollars.

At that time, no one had thought that both of them would work together to develop a simple test that would revolutionize early detection of cervical cancer and save lives. millions of women.

This is what is called the Pap smear, also called Pap or badl cytology.

After a year in the US without practicing as a physician, he was hired in 1914 by the Anatomy Department of Cornell University in New York as a researcher.

Later, Mavroyenis entered the same department as a technique and also for experiments.

"The scientific success of the couple came after the recruitment of a group of close friends to participate in a study on the Pap smear," said Google in its doodle of the day, in the following year. honor of the Greek.

"During the study, Papanicolaou detected malignant cells in the sample of one of them, diagnosing a cancer of the cervix of his wife's uterus" explains Google.