Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield ( / ˈ h aʊ n z f iː l d / HOWNZ -feeld ; 28 August 1919 – 12 August 2004) was a British electrical engineer who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Allan MacLeod Cormack for his role in creating the medical imaging method called X-ray computed tomography (CT).
His name is remembered in the Hounsfield scale, a way to measure how dense different materials are in CT scans. The scale uses Hounsfield units (symbol HU) to show values. Air has a value of -1000 HU, water is 0 HU, and dense cortical bone can be +1000 HU or higher.
Early life
Hounsfield was born on August 28, 1919, in Sutton-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, England. He was the youngest of five children, with two brothers and two sisters. His father, Thomas Hounsfield, was a farmer from Beighton and was connected to the well-known Hounsfield and Newbold families of Hackenthorpe Hall. His mother was named Blanche Dilcock. As a child, he was interested in the electrical tools and machines on his family's farm. Between the ages of 11 and 18, he worked on his own electrical recording devices, built a glider and flew it off haystacks, and experimented with water-filled tar barrels and acetylene to test how high they could be pushed by water jets. He attended Magnus Grammar School in Newark-on-Trent but did not perform well in academic subjects.
Military service and education
Before World War II, he volunteered to join the Royal Air Force as a reservist. There, he studied the basics of electronics and radar. After the war, he went to Faraday House Electrical Engineering College in London. He graduated with a Diploma of Faraday House (DFH). Before most university engineering departments existed, Faraday House was a specialized college focused on electrical engineering. It offered education at the university level, teaching both practical skills and theoretical knowledge.
Career
In 1949, Hounsfield started working at EMI, Ltd. in Hayes, Middlesex. There, he studied guided weapon systems and radar. He later wrote in his autobiography that he began this work in 1951, but this is incorrect. A biography of Hounsfield states the correct date is 10 October 1949. At EMI, he became interested in computers. In 1958, he helped design the first commercially available all-transistor computer made in Great Britain: the EMIDEC 1100. Soon after, he began working on the CT scanner at EMI. He continued to improve CT scanning, introducing a whole-body scanner in 1975. He was a senior researcher at the laboratories and remained a consultant after retiring in 1984.
During a trip in the countryside, Hounsfield had an idea: to figure out what is inside a box, X-ray readings could be taken from all angles around it. He then built a computer that could use X-ray images from different angles to create images of an object in "slices." Applying this idea to medicine led him to propose what is now called computed tomography. At the time, Hounsfield did not know about the theoretical math work done by Cormack for this device. He built a prototype head scanner and first tested it on a preserved human brain, then on a fresh cow brain from a butcher’s shop, and later on himself. On 1 October 1971, CT scanning was used in medical practice for the first time with a successful scan on a patient with a cerebral cyst at Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom. In 1975, Hounsfield created a whole-body scanner. The principles of computed tomography developed by Hounsfield are still used today (2022).
Awards and honours
In 1979, Hounsfield and Cormack were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Hounsfield received many honors besides the Nobel Prize. In 1976, he was given the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 1981, he was made a knight.
In 1974, he received the Wilhelm Exner Medal. In 1975, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). In 1976, he received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement. In 1977, he was awarded the Howard N. Potts Medal. In 1994, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
The Hounsfield Facility for 3-D CT imaging at the University of Nottingham opened in 2014. It was named after him. The facility was designed to use CT scanning to study biomaterials, especially in soil, and to explore the environment.
Personal life and death
Hounsfield enjoyed hiking and skiing. He decided to develop what became CT scanning during a walk in the countryside.
He retired from EMI in 1986 and used the money from his Nobel Prize to build a laboratory in his home. Hounsfield passed away in Kingston upon Thames, Greater London, in 2004. He was 84 years old.