Both attended religious school and, at thirteen years, had a Bar Mitzvah to celebrate their transition to manhood in the Jewish community.

Because of their high academic standing, he was able to spend a portion of his senior year engaged in cardiac research with Soma Weissat the medical school.

He was deployed to the Aleutians and then to England, where he became Chief of Medicine at the 160th General Hospital that was designated for wounded military evacuees with chest injuries.

[6] After the war, Zoll resumed his research work with coronary disease and continued to care for cardiac patients at Beth Israel Hospital.

Zoll remembered what he learned practicing in the military with Harken- that the hearts of the wounded contracted from the slightest stimulus during surgery.

With this in mind, Zoll embarked on a mission to develop electrical methods to prevent sudden arrhythmic death.

He accomplished these feats with the application of indirect and direct electrical shocks that restored a life-sustaining heart rhythm.

Each conformed to the scientific "gold" standards with well-documented detailed published data of laboratory experiments and results in patients that were replicated by independent investigators.

When the heart of his first clinical success ceased to beat because its native stimulus signal failed, Zoll saved the man by substituting a sequence of chest shocks produced by an experimental pacemaker borrowed from Otto Krayer of the Harvard Medical School Department of Physiology.

[19][20] The next year he collaborated with Alan Belgard, the chief electrical engineer and co-owner of the Electrodyne Company, to develop an efficient chest surface pacemaker to conform to Zoll's needs.

[21] The descendants of Zoll's discoveries continue to evolve in the forms of alarmed cardiac monitors, pacemakers, and closed chest defibrillators.

Lightweight portable Automated External Defibrillators (AED) are mandated by federal and state authorities in many locations, including schools, commercial airplanes, airports, and health clubs.