Frank Pantridge was born to a farming family near Hillsborough, County Down, on October 3rd, 1916. In 1934, he was accepted to the medicine program at Queens University Belfast (QUB). Graduating in 1939, he volunteered for WWII service the day after Britain declared war.
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Partridge was attached to the Royal Army Medical Corps and sent to serve in a military hospital in Malaya. He saw frontline action and was awarded the MC for bravery for his battlefield service during the Fall of Singapore in February 1942. Captured by Japanese forces, he was incarcerated in a Burmese labor camp and suffered significantly from malnutrition and ill-treatment. His imprisonment led to lingering health issues for the rest of his life.
On liberation from his internment, Pantridge returned to Belfast, where he qualified as an MD and worked as a lecturer at QUB. During a scholarship visit to the University of Michigan in 1948 - 1949, he developed an interest in electrocardiography, and upon returning to Belfast, he began a career as a cardiologist at the Royal Victoria Hospital while lecturing as a professor at QUB.
His tenure as RVH led to the introduction of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) techniques pioneered in America. He also introduced techniques used to repair diseased or defective heart valves. With 90% of heart attacks caused by disturbance of heart rhythms (ventricular fibrillation), Pantridge realized that immediate treatment of the condition might make the difference between life and death. In 1965, in association with John S. Geddes and Alfred Mawhinney, Pantridge developed a compact mobile defibrillator to treat patients in the field. While the initial device was bulky, 70kg, further development reduced the device size to 3kg by 1968.
Pantridge continued to serve in the field of cardiology until his 1982 retirement. His invention of mobile defibrillators saved numerous lives and led to the broad availability of these devices within community spaces. Pantridge died on December 24th, 2004, at the age of 88. He is buried in Hillsborough Graveyard
Pantridge Grave: Hillsborough Graveyard, Hillsborough, County Down, Northern Ireland
