Everything about Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield totally explained
Sir
Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield CBE,
FRS, (
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
X-ray computed tomography (CT).
His name is immortalised in the
Hounsfield scale, a quantitative measure of
radiodensity used in evaluating CT scans. The scale is defined in Hounsfield units (symbol
HU), running from air at -1000 HU, through water at 0 HU, and up to bone at +1000 HU.
Invention of the CT scanner
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 idea to the medical field led him to propose what is now known as computed tomography. At the time, Hounsfield wasn't aware of the work that Cormack had done on the theoretical mathematics for such a device. Hounsfield built a 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 September
1971, CT scanning was introduced into
medical practice with a successful scan on a cerebral
cyst patient at
Atkinson Morley Hospital in
Wimbledon, London,
United Kingdom. In
1975, Hounsfield built a whole-body scanner.
Biography
Childhood and education
Hounsfield was born in
Nottinghamshire, England in 1919. He was the youngest of five children.
As a child he was fascinated by the electrical gadgets and machinery found all over his parents' farm. Between the ages of eleven and eighteen, he tinkered with his own electrical recording machines, launched himself off haystacks with his own home-made
glider, and almost killed himself by using water filled tar barrels and acetylene to see how high they could be waterjet propelled. He attended the Magnus Grammar School (now Magnus Church of England School) in
Newark-on-Trent and excelled in
physics and
arithmetic.
Wartime
Shortly before
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, 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. Faraday House pioneered the use of sandwich courses, combining practical experience with theoretical study.
The suggestion that Hounsfield lacked formal engineering education to the level of a
Chartered Engineer doesn't 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.
EMI and later years
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 CT scanner at EMI. He continued to improve CT 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 never married and died in 2004.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield'.
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