Sir Peter Mansfield

Physicist, born in London, England, UK. He left school at 15 to work in a printing shop and later joined the army. He studied for his A levels at night-school and entered Queen Mary College, University of London, gaining his PhD in 1962. After various academic posts he became professor of physics at Nottingham University (1979). In 2003 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Paul C Lauterbur for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He was knighted in 1993.

Prof Sir Peter Mansfield, FRS, (born 9 October 1933), is a British physicist who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952, which went to Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell, was for the development of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), the scientific principle behind MRI. It was not until the 1970s with Lauterbur's and Mansfield's developments that NMR could be used to produce images of the body.

Mansfield is credited with showing how the radio signals from MRI can be mathematically analyzed, making interpretation of the signals into a useful image a possibility. He is also credited with discovering how fast imaging could be possible by developing the MRI protocol called echo-planar imaging. Echo-planar imaging allows T2* weighted images to be collected many times faster than previously possible.

Mansfield came from humble beginnings in South East London, attending secondary school in Peckham.