After obtaining his doctorate degree in engineering from the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule in Germany, Kouwenhoven began his career as the dean at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

With the help and cooperation of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's Department of Surgery and an Edison Electric Institute grant, Kouwenhoven was able to develop a closed-chest defibrillator.

For his contributions to the field of medical science, he became the first ever recipient of an honorary degree conferred by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

[3] Due to the success of his research, Kouwenhoven was promoted to an administrative position as the Dean of Johns Hopkins University's School of Engineering from 1938 to 1954.

"[3] Gil Kaisler was one of these graduate students and had helped design the original portable AC generator used to build the closed-chest defibrillator.

However, a problem arose when utility linemen, who were setting up electricity lines, started to die from ventricular fibrillation (VF).

Then, in 1925, the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health was offered a $10,000 award by the Consolidated Edison of New York in collaboration with Simon Flexner and the Rockefeller Institute to investigate and examine the effects of electricity on the human body.

[4] The principal investigator of this Consolidated Edison study, Johns Hopkins neurologist Othello Langworthy, brought William Kouwenhoven, who was currently the professor of electrical engineering, to this team.

[5] Kouwenhoven also discovered that high voltage shocks from the electrodes placed on the rats' heads caused the heart to stop pumping blood because the lungs had shut down completely.

He detected that delivering a second surge of electricity, also known as a countershock, led to the restoration of the sinus rhythm and normal heart contraction.

In the 1940s, researchers James Elam and Peter Safir perfected the emergency mouth-to-mouth method of lung ventilation, which is essential for oxygenating the blood when the heart is no longer functioning.

This novel device weighed approximately 200 pounds and consisted of a small box with two insulated cables with copper electrodes, which administered an AC current.

[4] In 1961, Kouwenhoven and his team were able to launch the first truly portable defibrillator with the help and support of Mine Safety Appliance Company of Pittsburg.

Guy Knickerbocker, an electrical engineer working at Kouwenhoven's laboratory, discovered that the copper electrodes caused a rise in blood pressure in the rest of the body when they were pressed down onto a dog's chest even before the current was passed through them.

[7] In the year 1957, the defibrillator was used for the first time to save the life of a patient suffering from ventricular fibrillation in an operating room at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

"[5] In 1969, Kouwenhoven became the first-ever recipient of an honorary degree presented by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine for his contributions to medical science.

Two years before his death, in 1973, Kouwenhoven was presented with one of the most prestigious biomedical prizes in America: the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research.

When he died in 1975, the New York Times obituary recognized Kouwenhoven's accomplishments and contributions by stating that he had "helped develop basic cardiac treatment devices and procedures used around the world.

The current holder of this Kouwenhoven Professorship is Jerry L. Prince, the associate director for research at the Center of Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology.

Prince has worked on co-developing HARP MRI, which provides doctors with the ability to assess the condition of heart muscles within seconds.