Sir Peter Mansfield
Considered one of the world's greatest living scientists, Sir Peter Mansfield has saved millions of lives with his revolutionary invention and
is one of Britain's few Nobel Prize winners.
Yet Sir Peter, now 75, failed his 11-Plus and left his secondary modern school at 15 without any qualifications to take up a job as a printer's assistant.
Inspired by the technology of "doodlebug' V1 and V2 rockets - which he'd seen falling near
his South East London home during the Second World War - he dreamed of becoming a rocket scientist.
Fortunately, an article about that very subject in the children's section of the Daily Mirror in 1949 spurred him on to a job at the Rocket Propulsion Department based in Westcott, Buckinghamshire, while continuing to study for his
O- and A-levels at night school.
Following his National Service, Peter won a place at Queen Mary College, London University, got his physics degree in 1959 and went on to do research in the UK and the USA.
In the 1970s, he and the late American scientist Paul Lauterbur both independently developed magnetic esonance imaging, MRI, which produces images of internal organs and other body tissues in extraordinary detail.
MRI is vitally important for potentially life-saving early diagnosis in various serious illnesses, including cancer. In many cases, it rules out the need for surgery and can be used to detect tumours as well as assessing brain and heart function.
In 1978, when Sir Peter needed a guinea pig to test his first MRI prototype scanner, he decided to use himself. "Previously, we'd only tested it on twigs, plants and dead human or animal tissue," he says. "The worst thing that could have happened was a cardiac arrest and my wife Jean was on hand to haul me out just in case anything went wrong." The test went well and the first images were recorded. Finally, Sir Peter and his team had made a breakthrough.
After 12 years of painstaking work, the first scanners were installed in hospitals. Now they are used worldwide and have saved countless lives.
Sir Peter received his knighthood in 1993. Ten years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize, jointly with Paul Lauterbur, and the University of Nottingham named its magnetic resonance research centre in his honour.
Sir Peter, who has two daughters and four grandchildren, still works in the University's physics department and is currently involved with improving MRI speed and safety. "Most people don't think about where MRI scanners come from," he says. "But I feel very pleased and proud when I receive letters from patients, thanking me for saving their lives."