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Warren M. Zapol, MD (1942 - 2021) was Anesthetist-in-Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital, a founder of the MGH Anesthesia Center for Critical Care Research, Reginald Jenney Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, and a faculty member of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. An exceptional scientist, mentor, doctor and engineer, Dr. Zapol was an inventor of the therapeutic use of inhaled nitric oxide, which has been administered to hundreds of thousands of patients, and is a live-saving world-wide standard of care for ""blue babies."" Dr. Zapol's research and medical missions spanned the globe. He led nine Antarctic expeditions to study how Weddell seals hold their breath and avoid the bends. In 2008, he was appointed by President George W. Bush and reappointed in 2012 by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. He also served on the Polar Research Board of the National Academies of Sciences. He was a member of the National Academy of Medicine and in 2003 was awarded the Inventor of the Year Award of the Intellectual Property Owners Association. The Zapol Glacier, named after him, flows from the largest mountain in Antarctica.
""Dr. Adventure: The memoir of a great scientist and a great human being."" Bob Langer David H. Koch (1962) Institute Professor, MIT ""Dr. Warren Zapol was the quintessential physician-scientist, whose brilliant mind could grasp everything from the mechanisms of nitric oxide, which lasts seconds, to the evolution of mammals over the span of 200 million years. Working from bench to bedside to far beyond, he was as comfortable in the wilds of Antarctica as he was in the hallowed halls of Harvard. His memoir is a gift that will help new generations appreciate how remarkable he truly was and will preserve the legacy of insight and inspiration felt by those who were fortunate enough to know him personally."" George A. Mashour, MD, PhD University of Michigan Medical School ""Dr. Adventure delves into what makes a stellar physician scientist tick. Warren put nitric oxide gas on the map when he applied my Nobel Prize winning basic discoveries to the clinic, saving thousands of infants who are born blue."" Lou Ignarro Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1998 ""Dr. Adventure captures the joy of medicine and the thrill of scientific discovery. I was reminded of one of my favorite (and life changing) books: 'Surely Your Joking, Mr. Feynman.' Like 'Surely Your Joking', Dr. Adventure is a first-person account of a life driven by endless curiosity and abundant gray matter. Perhaps unlike Feynman, Dr. Adventure also was a man of extraordinary kindness and generosity. The breadth of the Dr. Zapol's story is astounding: battling malaria, good-will ambassador to Russia, Antarctic explorations of mammalian marine biology. It is a story of the insight, courage, and resilience needed to bring nitric oxide to blue babies, preventing lifetime injury from hypoxic brain damage. That would have been enough for most. However, Dr. Warren Zapol balanced his science and adventures with his everyday job of caring for patients and (presumably in his spare time) running one of world's premier Departments of Anesthesiology. One can't help but be grateful that people like Dr. Zapol spend a lifetime directing their energy, brilliance, and joy of life into profound contributions to medicine, science, and humanity."" Steven L. Shafer, MD Professor Emeritus, Stanford University ""Warren Zapol had a big effect on me, on his students, and on the world. His humanity, his pole to pole pursuit of understanding the mammalian lung- culminating in an invention that saves countless lives-these all shine through in his remarkable, poignant, and inspiring memoir. I urge you to read it!"" Rox Anderson Director, Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
