Frank Pantridge

Frank Pantridge was born in Royal Hillsborough, County Down, Ireland, on October 3, 1916, the son of small landowners who likely tended quiet acres before he carried their resilience into medicine. He left that soil to survive Japanese captivity and cardiac beri-beri, then returned to Belfast where doubt about hospital-only defibrillators became action. His portable machines and ambulance plan turned sudden death into a race that can still be won, spreading from one city into the worldwide habit of answering heart failure before it finishes its work.