Dr. Adventure

Dr. Adventure is the gripping, intimate memoir of Dr. Warren Zapol, a globe-trotting adventurer whose discoveries and drive helped shape a half-century of science and medicine. Zapol’s memoir traces an obsession with adventure, from youthful misadventures in Jewish Brooklyn in the 1940s to decades of travel from pole to pole, from the Arctic to Antarctica. Charting his rise to a daring Harvard physician and scientist, mentor to astronauts and medical innovators, and advisor to Presidents Obama and Bush, Dr. Adventure charms with restless intellect, a quirky sense of humor, and outsized personality. In the spirit of Richard Feynman’s “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!,” it is a glorious ride.

Zapol illustrates how inspiration strikes through his numerous discoveries, including those dealing with “blue babies” – newborns whose lungs were not functioning properly at birth – and how this revolutionized medicine, treated millions, and created billion dollar businesses. And yet, in his late thirties, his own life had a shocking discovery waiting for him, which he describes in heartbreaking detail. Travel along with Dr. Adventure, a beautiful book of both body and mind, of heart-pounding exploration and inspiring reflection.

Author Biography

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.