Following his residency and two years in the U.S. Army
Surgical Research Unit, Larry Zaroff has had five
careers. He focused for 29 years on cardiac surgery, includ-
ing a stint as director of the cardiac surgical research
laboratory at Harvard. There his work centered on the
development of the demand pacemaker. He spent the next
10 years concentrating on climbing and did a first ascent
of Chulu West, a 22,000-foot peak on the Nepal-Tibet bor-
der. His third life has been at Stanford, where he received
a Ph.D. in 2000, and where he teaches courses in medical
humanities. His fourth career has been as a writer, publishing in the NYT science section, Pharos, Pulse, Atrium, The Hektoen International Journal, and others. He now works one day a week as a volunteer family doctor. He has received awards as the outstanding faculty advisor for the Human Biology program and in 2006 was honored as Stanford's Teacher of the Year.
