Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield (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. He was recognized for his role in creating X-ray computed tomography (CT), a diagnostic technique used to produce detailed images of the body.

His name is associated with the Hounsfield scale, a measurement system used to evaluate CT scans. The scale is measured in Hounsfield units (HU). Air has a value of −1000 HU, water is 0 HU, and dense cortical bone has a value of +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 devices and machines found on his family’s farm. Between the ages of 11 and 18, he worked on his own electrical recording machines, jumped off haystacks using a homemade glider, and once nearly injured himself by experimenting 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 excel in school.

Military service and education

Before World War II began, he joined the Royal Air Force as a volunteer. 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 called the DFH (Diploma of Faraday House). At that time, most universities did not have engineering departments. Faraday House was a specialized college for electrical engineering. It offered education at the university level, combining hands-on experience with classroom learning.

Career

In 1949, Hounsfield started working at EMI, Ltd. in Hayes, Middlesex. There, he studied guided weapons and radar. He later wrote the wrong date, 1951, in his autobiography, which is on the Nobel Prize website. The correct date is October 10, 1949, as noted in a biography about him. 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 improved CT scanning over time, introducing a whole-body scanner in 1975. He worked as a senior researcher at the laboratories until his retirement in 1984, after which he continued as a consultant.

While on a trip in the countryside, Hounsfield thought about how to see what was inside a box by taking X-ray readings from all angles around it. He then built a computer that could use X-rays taken from different directions to create images of an object in "slices." He applied this idea to medicine, leading to the development of computed tomography. At the time, Hounsfield did not know about the earlier mathematical work done by Cormack on this technology. He built a prototype head scanner and tested it first on a preserved human brain, then on a fresh cow brain from a butcher’s shop, and later on himself. On October 1, 1971, CT scanning was used in medicine for the first time with a successful scan of a patient with a brain cyst at Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, London, United Kingdom. In 1975, Hounsfield created a whole-body scanner. The methods he developed for computed tomography 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 awards besides the Nobel Prize. In 1976, he was given the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 1981, he was knighted.

In 1974, he was awarded the Wilhelm Exner Medal. In 1975, he became 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 given 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 liked to hike and ski. He decided to create what became CT scanning during a walk in the countryside.

He left his job at EMI in 1986 and used the money from his Nobel Prize to build a private laboratory in his home. Hounsfield passed away in Kingston upon Thames, Greater London, in 2004 at the age of 84.