[1] Toll received his bachelor's degree in physics from Yale University in 1944, after which he served in the U.S. Navy in World War II.
When Governor William Donald Schaefer decided to merge most of the state's public universities into a single system, Toll was put in charge of the merger.
In 1995, at age 71, he became president of Washington College, a small, private liberal arts school in Chestertown, Maryland.
[3] In January 2004, he announced that he would leave Washington College and return to physics research at the University of Maryland.
Toll died on July 15, 2011, of respiratory failure at Fox Hill Assisted Living in Bethesda, Maryland.