Physicist, born in Newark, Nottinghamshire, C England, UK. He joined the RAF in 1939 and worked on radar, becoming an instructor at RAF Cranwell. He left in 1946, studied at Faraday House in London, and joined Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI) in 1951. He was head of the design team that developed the EMI-DEC 1100, the first British solid-state business computer, and made notable advances in computer memory design and automatic character recognition. Independently of Allan Cormack, he developed the method of X-ray computer-assisted tomography (CAT), the first body scanners being made by EMI in the early 1970s. He continued to work on new medical imaging methods, and for this work shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Cormack. His other honours include the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award in 1975. He was knighted in 1981.
Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield CBE (28 August 1919 – 12 August 2004) was an English electrical engineer who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Allan McLeod Cormack for his part in developing the diagnostic technique of computerized axial tomography (CAT).
His name is immortalised in the Hounsfield scale, a quantitative measure of radiodensity used in evaluating CAT scans.
Research
While on an outing in the country, Hounsfield came up with the idea that one could determine what was inside a box by taking X-ray readings at all angles around the object.
He then set to work constructing a computer that could take input from X-rays at various angles to create an image of the object in "slices".
Hounsfield built the prototype head scanner and tested it first on a preserved human brain, then on a fresh cow brain from a butcher shop, and later on himself.
Biography
Childhood and education
Hounsfield was born in Nottinghamshire, England in 1919.
After the war, he attended Faraday House Electrical Engineering College in London, graduating with the DFH (Diploma of Faraday House).
Faraday House was a specialist Electrical Engineering college that provided university level education and was established in 1890, before the advent of most university engineering departments.
The suggestion that Hounsfield lacked formal engineering education to the level of a Chartered Engineer does not reflect the nature of engineering education at the time when Hounsfield was a student, or the esteem in which Faraday House was held within the profession.
Wartime
In World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force as a volunteer reservist where he learned the basics of electronics and radar.
Postwar, computers and EMI
In 1951, Hounsfield began work at EMI Ltd.
The CAT scanner
Shortly afterwards, he began work on the CAT scanner at EMI.
Hounsfield received numerous awards in addition to the Nobel Prize.
Further reading
short article with technical references on Ganfyd medical reference site Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Laureates (1976-2000)|
1976: Blumberg, Gajdusek | 1977: Guillemin, Schally, Yalow | 1978: Arber, Nathans, Smith | 1979: Cormack, Hounsfield | 1980: Benacerraf, Dausset, Snell | 1981: Sperry, Hubel, Wiesel | 1982: Bergström, Samuelsson, Vane | 1983: McClintock | 1984: Jerne, Köhler, Milstein | 1985: Brown, Goldstein | 1986: Cohen, Levi-Montalcini | 1987: Tonegawa | 1988: Black, Elion, Hitchings | 1989: Bishop, Varmus | 1990: Murray, Thomas | 1991: Neher, Sakmann | 1992: Fischer, Krebs | 1993: Roberts, Sharp | 1994: Gilman, Rodbell | 1995: Lewis, Nüsslein-Volhard, Wieschaus | 1996: Doherty, Zinkernagel | 1997: Prusiner | 1998: Furchgott, Ignarro, Murad | 1999: Blobel | 2000: Carlsson, Greengard, Kandel Complete List | Laureates (1901-1925) | Laureates (1926-1950) | Laureates (1951-1975) | Laureates (2001- ) |
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