Co-inventor of MRI dies
Peter Mansfield, a British physicist, Nobel Prize winner, passed away at the age of 83 on Feb. 8. He was known for his discoveries in MRI - method of medical imaging based on NMR - a 1937's invention of Polish-born scientist of Jewish descent, Isaac I. Rabi.
MRI scans generate 3D images of the body's internal organs without potentially harmful X-rays by utilising strong magnetic fields and radio waves.
In 1937, Columbia University Professor Rabi observed the quantum phenomenon dubbed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). He recognised that the atomic nuclei show their presence by absorbing or emitting radio waves when exposed to a sufficiently strong magnetic field. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his development of a technique for measuring the magnetic characteristics of atomic nuclei.
Rabi’s technique was based on the resonance principle first described by Irish physicist Joseph Larmor, and it enabled more precise measurements of nuclear magnetic moments than had ever been previously possible. Rabi’s method was later improved by a group of physicists, including Nobel Prize winners Edward Purcell, Felix Bloch, and the late Mansfield who in 1978 first volunteered to undergo a whole-body MRI examination despite unpredictable at that time side-effects and possible danger.
As for Rabi, he was born in 1898 in Rymanow near Rzeszow (south-eastern Poland). He passed away following a prolonged illness in 1988, in New York. Shortly before his death, he experienced first-hand the practical offspring of his magnetic resonance work when doctors used MRI to aid in his diagnosis. (PAP)
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