PETER MANSFIELD, 83
Nobel winner helped invent the MRI
Peter Mansfield, a physicist who won a Nobel Prize for helping to invent MRI scanners, died Wednesday.
The University of Nottingham released a statement from Dr. Mansfield's family on Thursday confirming his death a day earlier.
The London-born Dr. Mansfield joined the University of Nottingham in central England in 1964 as a lecturer in physics.
The Morning Sun
He shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in medicine with American chemist Paul Lauterbur for their work developing magnetic resonance imaging, which uses magnetic fields and radio waves to generate 3-D images of the body's internal organs without the use of X-rays.
In 1978, Dr. Mansfield became the first person to step inside a whole-body MRI scanner so it could be tested on a human subject.
Their work revolutionized the detection of disease by providing views of internal organs without the need for surgery.
Dr. Mansfield was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993.
"Few people can look back on a career and conclude that they have changed the world," David Greenaway, vice chancellor of the University of Nottingham, said. "In pioneering MRI, that is exactly what Sir Peter Mansfield has done; he has changed our world for the better."
He is survived by his wife, two daughters and four grandchildren.
—Associated Press