Google today paid tribute to the Malaysian doctor who laid the groundwork for what has now become the response to the COVID-19 pandemic by multiple countries.
Penang-born doctor Wu Lien-teh, who died in 1960 and has been regarded as a hero during the 1910 Manchurian plague, would have been 142 years old today. He had invented face masks to protect people from the airborne disease. The N95 mask we all know now is believed to be modelled after Wu’s invention.
He invented the mask in 1910 using cotton, gauze, and cloth filters when the plague spread through Manchuria in northeast China and killed over 60,000 people. He had also encouraged the setting up of quarantine facilities as well as the cremation of bodies. The plague ended the following year.
Born to Chinese immigrant parents in 1879, Wu was the first graduate of Chinese descent to graduate with a medical degree from Cambridge University.
In 1935, he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine due to his contributions in containing the plague. The masks were distributed during the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918.
He died at the age of 80.
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