14 Facts About Peter Mansfield

Sir Peter Mansfield was an English physicist who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Paul Lauterbur, for discoveries concerning Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Peter Mansfield's mark was high enough for him to go to a Central School in Peckham.

Peter Mansfield left school shortly afterwards to work as a printer's assistant.

At the age of 18, having developed an interest in rocketry, Peter Mansfield took up a job with the Rocket Propulsion Department of the Ministry of Supply in Westcott, Buckinghamshire.

Peter Mansfield graduated with a BSc from Queen Mary in 1959.

Peter Mansfield's project was to build a pulsed NMR spectrometer to study solid polymer systems.

Peter Mansfield received his PhD in 1962; his thesis was titled Proton magnetic resonance relaxation in solids by transient methods.

In 1964, Peter Mansfield returned to England to take up a place as a lecturer at Nottingham University where he could continue his studies in multiple-pulse NMR.

Peter Mansfield was successively appointed Senior Lecturer in 1968 and Reader in 1970.

In 1979 Peter Mansfield was appointed Professor of the Department of Physics until his retirement in 1994.

Peter Mansfield is credited with discovering how fast imaging could be possible by developing the MRI protocol called echo-planar imaging.

Whilst working at Nottingham University, Peter Mansfield tested the first full body prototype, installed just before Christmas, 1978.

Peter Mansfield was so keen, that he volunteered to test it himself and produced the first scan of a live patient.

Peter Mansfield died in Nottingham on 8 February 2017, aged 83.