Godfrey Hounsfield

Godfrey Hounsfield (1919-2004) was a British electrical engineer who developed X-ray computed tomography, a diagnostic imaging technique that reconstructs cross-sectional images of the body from X-ray measurements taken at many angles. He first tested his prototype scanner on a preserved human brain, then a fresh cow brain, and later on himself, before the technology entered medical practice on 1 October 1971 with a successful scan performed at a London hospital. Working at EMI, he continued to develop the technology, introducing a whole-body scanner in 1975. For this work he shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Allan MacLeod Cormack, whose theoretical work underpinned the scanner reconstruction methods; the Hounsfield scale used to measure CT scan density is named in his honor.