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Susan La Flesche Picotte’s 152nd Birthday



oday’s Doodle honors the life and legacy of Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte (1865-1915), the first American Indian to earn a medical degree.

Picotte grew up in Nebraska on the Omaha reservation, where her father urged her to “be somebody in the world.” She left her village and made her way east, eventually attending the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (featured in today’s Doodle on the left), where she graduated at the top of her class. Despite receiving numerous prestigious job offers, Picotte chose to return to the reservation to provide the medical care that her tribe badly needed – tending to patients across 1,350 square miles on foot and horseback, in wind, snow, and rain.

Picotte was also a fierce public health advocate and social reformer. She promoted life-saving hygiene practices, such as the elimination of communal drinking cups and the installation of screen doors to keep out disease-carrying insects. Most notably, in 1913, she personally raised the funds to build a modern hospital in her hometown, which you can see pictured to the right of today’s Doodle.

Picotte’s remarkable career as a physician and health advocate just scratches the surface of her legacy. She was more than the reservation’s doctor – she was also an advisor, confidant, and symbol of hope for the Omaha.

Happy 152nd birthday to “Dr. Sue,” as her patients called her – a true American heroine.

Father's Day 2017

Mudik 2017



Today’s Doodle marks the start of Mudik, a yearly homecoming in Indonesia. City folks take this time to travel far and wide to visit family in rural villages. Travelers get home any way they can — by motorbike, train, car, and bus. Local governments even offer mudik gratis, discounted tickets helping motorbike travelers to take ferries and buses. Leading up to Mudik, cities become ghost towns when their residents leave. In fact, electricity use in Jakarta can decrease by up to 70% during Mudik!

Despite all the traffic, Indonesians happily jump into the hustle and bustle of travel in order to bring back loads of oleh-oleh, or souvenirs, for their relatives.

Safe travels to all and happy Mudik!

First Day of Winter 2017 (Australia, New Zealand)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 170th Birthday



To celebrate Tchaikovsky's birthday, the doodlers and I decided to collaborate with the San Francisco Ballet! This is the first time we used real people to pose for a doodle and, thanks to a group of well organized and talented dancers/staff, everything went swimmingly! A single day of photography was all we needed before I took a compilation of individual/pair photos and pieced them together to make our final logo. You can take a peek at some behind the scenes work on YouTube.

Machado de Assis’ 178th Birthday



In 1839, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was born to a simple family in Morro do Livramento, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was the grandson of freed slaves, in a country where slavery wouldn't be fully abolished until 49 years later. Machado faced the many challenges of being of mixed race in the 19th century, including limited access to formal education. But none of that stopped him from studying literature. While working as a typographer, he experimented with poems, romances, novels and plays.

Machado's work shaped the realism movement in Brazil. He became known for his wit and his eye-opening critiques of society. Today's Doodle features some scenes from his novels — Quincas Borba, Dom Casmurro, and The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas are considered masterpieces to this day. Machado was also a founder and the first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

Happy 178th birthday to a literary pioneer!

Yuri Kondratyuk's 115th Birthday



Yuri Kondratyuk was a self-educated mechanic who, 50 years before lunar flights, foresaw ways of reaching the moon, calculating the best means of achieving a lunar landing. His theory of the gravitational slingshot trajectory to accelerate a spacecraft, known today as the "Kondratyuk Route", was eventually adopted by the engineers of the Apollo program for American lunar expeditions.

His personal story is also fascinating, though ultimately heartbreaking. Yuri's developing theories on space travel were happening during a time when such pursuits were considered "absurd", and consequently were prohibited by the ruling government of his time. Because of this, his work – and much of his life – was shrouded in secrecy. Even his real name was a secret (it was Aleksandr Gnatovich Shargei). Fortunately, history has been much kinder to his legacy, and today he is considered an early pioneer of space exploration. For his doodle, we felt that while it is not quite the real thing, it was only right to show an aspirational Kondratyuk gazing about – and amongst – the stars.

Winter Solstice 2017 (Southern Hemisphere)



Summer Solstice 2017 (Northern Hemisphere)

Oskar Fischinger’s 117th Birthday



Today we celebrate the 117th birthday of the influential filmmaker and visual artist Oskar Fischinger.

I first discovered Fischinger's work in a college class on visual music. His films, most of which were made from the 1920s to 1940s, left me awed and puzzled — how could he make such magic without computers?

In the world of design, Fischinger is a towering figure, especially in the areas of motion graphics and animation. He is best known for his ability to combine impeccably synchronized abstract visuals with musical accompaniment, each frame carefully drawn or photographed by hand. A master of motion and color, Fischinger spent months — sometimes years — planning and handcrafting his animations.

Although mostly known for his films, Fischinger was also a prolific painter, creating numerous works that capture the dramatic movement and feeling of his films within a single frame. Unsatisfied with traditional media, he also invented a contraption, the Lumigraph, for generating fantastic chromatic displays with hand movements — a sort of optical painting in motion and a precursor to the interactive media and multi-touch games of today.

Even with the advanced technology that now exists, emulating Fischinger's work is an impossible task. His colors and motion are so carefully planned yet naturally playful, his timing so precise yet human. So today's Doodle aims to pay homage to him, while allowing you to compose your own visual music. I hope it inspires you to seek out the magic of Fischinger for yourself.

Hokiichi Hanawa’s 271st Birthday



When Helen Keller visited the memorial house of Hanawa Hokiichi in 1937, she said of the revered scholar, "I believe that his name would pass down from generation to generation like a stream of water." Indeed, traces of Hokiichi's legacy can be found in many fields today. Like a river originating from humble beginnings in Tokyo in 1746, his influence has stretched through law, politics, economics, history, and medicine.

Even during his lifetime, Hokiichi's impact was far-reaching. He is best known for editing the Gunsho ruijū, a collection of more than 500 volumes of kokugaku studies (philology and philosophy). Later in life, Hokiichi established the Wagakusho school, where he taught Japanese classics to a rapt audience of adoring students.

Hokiichi’s early life was not easy — at the age of seven, he lost his vision. But his remarkable memory began to impress local scholars, and he was encouraged to pursue a life of study, ultimately becoming one of the most learned men in the country. Hanawa Hokiichi’s legacy is one of dogged learning, committed teaching, and enduring perseverance, and it lives on in Japanese scholarship and culture.