Lilly M. S. Dubowitz (1930–2016)

Lilly M.S. Dubowitz, MD, MRCP, FRCP, née Sebők, was born to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. Her parents were Hedwig and Julius Sebők, a textile engineer. Her father was sent to a Nazi forced labor camp during World War II and died shortly after his release. Lilly and her mother survived the war in hiding, using falsified papers they obtained from the Swedish Embassy. In 1948, Lilly and her mother emigrated to Australia, where they joined her mother's family from Vienna. She worked as a waitress and in a biochemistry laboratory while studying medicine part-time at the University of Melbourne, finally graduating in 1956. Two years later, she went to London for postgraduate training in endocrinology at Hammersmith Hospital. She met South African-born neurologist Victor Dubowitz in 1960 and they were married within three months. Soon afterwards, the couple moved to Sheffield, where Dr. Victor had an academic position. Dr. Lilly Dubowitz took a temporary post in pediatrics and developed a strong interest in the study of newborn and infant health. She worked on newborn research at night while caring for her own four young sons during the day, and received a doctorate in medicine from Sheffield University in 1973. She, with her husband Victor, developed the Dubowitz Score used to assess the gestational age of neonates by examining their neurological signs as well as anatomical features. The Dubowitz Score was published in 1970 and was rapidly adopted around the world for distinguishing mature but under-nourished babies from premature babies who were appropriately small for their age. In 1972, the Dubowitzs returned to Hammersmith Hospital in London, where Dr. Lilly pioneered the use of cranial ultrasound and, later, magnetic resonance imaging -- then used in adults but not yet in children -- to assess the brains of newborns. In 1980, husband and wife collaborated again to develop a systematic method for the neurological examination of the newborn. Their assessment paid special attention to premature infants, who at the time were widely believed to be impossible to assess. Dr. Lilly Dubowitz continued working at Hammersmith Hospital until her retirement in 1995. At that time, Dr. Dubowitz undertook an exhaustive investigation into the fate of her long-lost paternal uncle, Stefan Sebők, an architect who had disappeared in Russia during World War II. Much of her research was done in KGB files in Moscow. The result was a 2012 book entitled In Search of a Forgotten Architect.