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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 was shared with Paul Lauterbur, who also contributed to
the development of MRI. Sir Peter is a professor at the University of Nottingham.
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. For decades magnetic
resonance was used mainly for studying the chemical structure of
substances, and Mansfield's first project in this field was to
develop a portable, transistorised Earth's field NMR (EFNMR)
spectrometer in the late 1950s. 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. It also has made functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) feasible.
Mansfield came from humble beginnings in South East London,
attending secondary school in Peckham. He left school at 15, and became a
printer. He took A levels in night school. He then studied physics
at Queen Mary College,
London, graduating with a BSc in 1959 and
a PhD in 1962.[1]
He has worked in the Department of Physics at the University of Nottingham since
1964.
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