Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield (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. The scale is defined in Hounsfield units (symbol HF), running from air at -1000 HF, through water at 0 HF, and up to bone at +1000 HF.

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". Applying this possibility to the medical field led him to propose what is now known as computerized axial tomography. At the time, Hounsfield was not aware of the work that Cormack had done on the theorectical mathematics for such a device. 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. In 1972, CAT scanning was introduced into medical practice with a successful scan on a cerebral cyst patient at Atkinson Morley's Hospital in Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom. In 1975, Hounsfield built a whole-body scanner.

Biography

Hounsfield was born on a farm in Nottinghamshire, England. In World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force as a volunteer reservist where he learned the basics of electronics and radar. After the war, he attended Faraday House Electrical Engineering College in London. He never attended any university and was largely self-taught.

In 1951, Hounsfield began work at EMI Ltd. where he researched guided weapon systems and radar. There, he became interested in computers and in 1958, he helped design the first all-transistor computer made in Great Britain, the EMIDEC 1100. Shortly afterwards, he began work on the CAT scanner at EMI. He continued to improve CAT scanning, introducing a whole-body scanner in 1975, and was senior researcher (and after his retirement in 1984, consultant) to the laboratories.

Hounsfield received numerous awards in addition to the Nobel Prize. He was appointed Commander of the British Empire in 1976 and knighted in 1981. In 1975, he was elected to the Royal Society.

He was a bachelor his whole life.

External links

Nobel Prize Biography (http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1979/hounsfield-autobio.html)