At Columbia, he was the doctoral advisor of Rebecca Lancefield, although he did not permit her to physically work in his laboratory due to her gender.

Zinsser also received another military citation for taking exceptional risks to minister to wounded soldiers while under direct enemy fire.

[2] Zinsser's scientific work focused on bacteriology and immunology and he is most associated with typhus, especially the form called Brill–Zinsser disease, his namesake.

He wrote several books about biology and bacteria, notably Rats, Lice and History (1935), a "biography" of typhus fever.

Zinsser was a mentor to, and colleague of, John Franklin Enders,[8] who was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (together with Frederick Chapman Robbins and Thomas Huckle Weller).