Godfrey N. Hounsfield
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Godfrey N. Hounsfield
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1979
Born: 28 August 1919, Newark, United Kingdom
Died: 12 August 2004, Kingston upon Thames, United Kingdom
Affiliation at the time of the award: Central Research Laboratories, EMI, London, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: “for the development of computer assisted tomography”
Prize share: 1/2
Work
The discovery of X-rays and the possibility of obtaining images of the body’s interior quickly led to medical applications. The possibilities of X-ray technology were further expanded with computed tomography (CT). During the 1960s Godfrey Hounsfield developed an apparatus in which clusters of X-ray beams sent through the body from different angles are registered when the have passed the body. Through advanced computer calculations based on the measurement data, images of different cross sections of the body are created. These also provide a basis for three-dimensional images.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
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