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Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield KT CBE. 28 August 1919 −
12 August 2004: Elected F.R.S. 1975
P. N. T. Wells
Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 2005 51, 221-235, published 1 December 2005
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SIR GODFREY NEWBOLD HOUNSFIELD KT CBE
28 August 1919 — 12 August 2004
Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 51, 221–235 (2005)
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SIR GODFREY NEWBOLD HOUNSFIELD KT CBE
28 August 1919 — 12 August 2004
Elected FRS 1975
BY P. N. T. WELLS FRS
Institute of Medical Engineering and Medical Physics, Cardiff University,
School of Engineering, Queen’s Buildings, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK
INTRODUCTION
Within a few months of the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen in Würzburg,
Germany, on 8 November 1895, the practice of medicine had been revolutionized. The ability
to see inside the intact human body advanced the diagnosis of disease from the art of guesswork into a new era based on knowledge and logic. However, there are limitations to what can
be seen in X-ray shadow images. The different soft tissues of the body attenuate X-rays at very
similar rates. Consequently, although the anatomical positions of many organs and structures
can be seen on plain radiographs, it is often difficult to identify pathological tissue changes.
On plain radiographs, the shadows of all the structures within the body are superimposed, so
there is no means of depth discrimination in the images. Over the years, several technical innovations emerged that helped to mitigate these problems. First, contrast agents—compounds of
iodine and barium, and air itself—can be introduced into the vessels and cavities of the body.
This may make it possible to identify the corresponding structures in their images: examples
of this approach include angiography and pneumoencephalography. Second, by moving the Xray source and the film by a system of mechanical linkages, the shadows of the tissues in a
particular plane within the patient can be recorded in fixed positions on the film, whereas the
shadows of tissues not lying in that plane are blurred by the motion. These two-dimensional
images—so-called tomograms, from the Greek, tomos (meaning ‘a slice’) and graphein
(meaning ‘to draw’)—can be made in contiguous planes, to build up a three-dimensional picture of the internal structures of the body. Third, a pair of X-ray images obtained at slightly
different angles can be viewed stereoscopically. This is another way of obtaining three-dimensional information.
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By the early 1970s, X-radiography had become mature and clinically indispensable; however, recent progress had been driven primarily by the evolution of clinical and radiographic
techniques rather than by innovations in instrumentation. Moreover, X-radiography was not
the only method of imaging. Radioactive tracers and the gamma camera were being used to
make low-resolution images that showed tissues and structures within which the tracers were
taken up by physiological or metabolic processes. The techniques of positron emission and
single-photon-emission computed tomography, by which two-dimensional cross-sectional
images of the distribution of radioactive tracers were produced, had been demonstrated. Twodimensional ultrasonic imaging had begun to show its potential, particularly in obstetrical
investigations. Despite these advances, however, traditional radiography dominated in the hospital X-ray departments of this period.
Meanwhile, Mr Godfrey Hounsfield, an engineer, was developing his remarkable invention,
X-ray computer-assisted tomography (CAT). The company for which Hounsfield worked,
Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI), was famous mainly for producing vinyl records and,
at the time, much of its revenue derived from the music of the pop group The Beatles.
Hounsfield’s research certainly did not align well with the core business of the company. His
technique—CAT scanning—produced cross-sectional images of biological tissues with a
sensitivity to differences in X-ray attenuation that was a thousand times greater than that of
traditional X-radiography. When the first X-ray CAT scans were presented, they were at first
greeted with indifference by the great majority of the then highly conservative general radiological community. But the visionaries among them, particularly those who were neuroradiologists, recognized the profound significance of the new technique, and the rest of the world
rapidly followed: the huge importance of Hounsfield’s invention was very soon universally
acclaimed. Radiology experienced a renaissance and medical practice entered the modern era
of accuracy in diagnosis and certainty in treatment.
THE EARLY YEARS
Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield was born near Newark on Trent, in the most easterly part of
Nottinghamshire, on 28 August 1919. He was the youngest of the five children of Thomas
Hounsfield. The family lived on a farm that his father, who had previously been in the steel
industry, had bought after World War I in Sutton on Trent, 10 miles north of Newark. The
young Hounsfield was sent to Magnus Grammar School in Newark. This school could trace
its history back to 1532, when it was founded by Thomas Magnus, Chaplain to King
Henry VIII. Besides Hounsfield, other luminaries of the school included one who, coincidentally, later and for many years until 1969 held the position of Managing Director of EMI. He
was Sir Joseph Lockwood, and Hounsfield was destined to spend most of his working life in
the same company.
Hounsfield did not shine at school, although he showed some aptitude in physics and mathematics. He was rather lacking in self-confidence and tended to be somewhat introverted. At
home, his elder siblings—two brothers and two sisters—rather left him to his own devices.
Consequently, he was able to engage without interference in the opportunities that the farm
presented. It was a marvellous playground. The young Hounsfield was intrigued by all the
mechanical and electrical gadgets, such as the threshing machines, the binders and the generators. From the age of 11 years he became a keen experimentalist. He constructed electrical
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recording machines. He made a glider and launched himself from the tops of haystacks, to
explore the principles of flight. He exploded a mixture of acetylene and oxygen in water-filled
tar barrels: the resulting water jet propelled one barrel to an altitude of 1000 feet. He rigged
up a projector for the village cinema.
When Hounsfield left school in his mid-teens, his formal educational qualifications were
minimal but his grasp of practical engineering was already rather well developed. He went to
work in the drawing office of a local builder.
At the outbreak of World War II, Hounsfield joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a volunteer reservist. This gave him the opportunity to study the books that the RAF provided for
radio mechanics. He took a course in radio, passed a trade test and was taken on as a radar
mechanic instructor. His first posting was to the Royal College of Science in South
Kensington—then occupied by the RAF—and, later, he was based at Cranwell Radar School.
He rose to the rank of Corporal. In his spare time at Cranwell, Hounsfield sat and passed the
City and Guilds examination in radio communications. He also built a large-screen oscilloscope for use in teaching, for which he was awarded a certificate of merit.
It was fortunate that, while he was at Cranwell, Hounsfield’s work came to the notice of
Air Vice-Marshal Cassidy. After the war, the Air Vice-Marshal arranged for a grant to be given
to Hounsfield to enable him to attend Faraday House Electrical Engineering College in
London, where he received a diploma. This was to be Hounsfield’s highest formal educational
qualification.
The war gave opportunities to Hounsfield that he would not have had in peace-time.
Probably, had the war not intervened, Hounsfield would have remained in relative obscurity,
possibly keeping experimentation as a hobby but being obliged by circumstances to lead a
rather ordinary life.
THE FIRST INVENTIONS
As it was, however, Hounsfield’s life was extraordinary. He got a job on the staff of EMI at
Hayes in Middlesex in 1951, where he worked for a while on radar and guided weapons and
later ran a small design laboratory. During this time he became particularly interested in computers, which were still in their infancy. Hounsfield designed drums and tape decks with little
prior art to guide him. The core store was a relatively new idea. These stores had to be
designed and then plain-threaded—and untangled—by hand.
From around 1958, Hounsfield led a design team that built the first all-transistor computer
to be constructed in the UK. This was the EMIDEC 1100. The transistor that was used was the
type OC72. This device was inherently much slower than the thermonic vacuum tubes that
were then used in most computers. Hounsfield overcame this limitation by driving the transistors with magnetic cores. The speed of his computer compared well with that of contemporary computers using valves and this probably led to the earlier demise of the valve than
otherwise would have occurred. EMI sold 24 large computer installations using Hounsfield’s
magnetic drive technology before increases in the speed of transistors rendered the method
obsolete.
At this juncture, Hounsfield was transferred to the EMI Central Research Laboratories, also
at Hayes. His first task was to design a one-million-word immediate-access thin-film computer memory. It was not long before it was realized that this could never be commercially
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viable, so the project was abandoned. It was providential that, perhaps because of slack management, Hounsfield was left to go away quietly and to think of other fields of research that
might prove to be fruitful.
THE INVENTION OF COMPUTER-ASSISTED TOMOGRAPHY
Hounsfield at first wondered whether he might be able to find something new in pattern recognition. His colleagues at EMI were running out of ideas in this field and Hounsfield began to
think about picture reconstruction. In his own words, while on a weekend ramble in the
country in 1967:
I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if I had many readings taken from all angles through a box. Wouldn’t it be nice
if I could reconstruct in 3-D what was actually in the box from these random direction readings taken through
the box and, of course, turning the three-dimensional object into a series of slices. Then it was easier to reconstruct a slice than a volume and then I started working out mathematically how I could do this. There was very
little in my mind then about X-rays used in medicine. It was just a good exercise to think about as a problem
and so I thought, well, I’d better try reconstructing some bits. I took a matrix of numbers, with a square in the
middle. I scanned that by means of a computer programme and got the values of the addition of the absorptions and then I reconstructed a picture in another programme. I was surprised how well it worked. Well, we
were quite excited about this and I went to Department of Health (the government Department responsible for
the National Health Service) waving this piece of paper and saying, look, I can reconstruct a picture, a slice
through the body, with great accuracy, providing that I have enough photons to do it, and they were very helpful at the beginning.
It should be noted here that the involvement of the Department of Health (DoH) began in
1968. Dr Evan Lennon was the Radiological Advisor to the DoH and he was instrumental in
bringing the project to fruition. Dr Cliff Gregory—the Chief Scientific Officer—and Mr
Gordon Higson were the departmental staff who immediately realized the significance of
Hounsfield’s invention and who, it can now be admitted, sailed rather close to the wind in providing the financial and material support of the DoH, which was crucial in sustaining
Hounsfield’s work at EMI.
The nature of Hounsfield’s work in an industrial company—and, indeed, Hounsfield’s own
nature as a solitary inventor—meant that he was unfamiliar with the related research of others
and, of course, with their publications in the scientific literature. He knew nothing of the work
of the mathematician Johann Radon, who, while at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna in
1917, had solved the problem of the integration necessary to backproject a filtered profile to
give a true image of a gravitational field. He was ignorant of Richard Bates’s work in the
University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, on improvements in tomographs. In
1971, Bates, an electrical engineer, and his student Terence Peters had published a paper proposing a method for producing accurate cross-sections from X-ray shadowgrams by digital or
optical filtering of traditional tomograms generated by out-of-plane blurring. The earlier and,
perhaps, more relevant 1961 publication by William Oldendorf of the University of California
at Los Angeles was unknown to him. Oldendorf, a neurologist, had experimented with scanning an object from many angles along its perimeter and obtained cross-sectional images from
the slight variations in the composition of structures within the object. Potentially most relevant of all, and also unknown to Hounsfield, was the work of Allan Cormack. Cormack, whose
family had emigrated to South Africa from Scotland shortly before World War I, did his sem-
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inal work on what subsequently became known as CAT scanning in Cape Town in 1956,
before publishing his results in 1963 and 1964 after moving to Tufts University in Medford,
Massachusetts, USA. Cormack was later to be the joint winner, with Hounsfield, of the 1979
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Cormack’s research was complementary to that of
Hounsfield. His objective was to improve the dosimetry of cancer radiotherapy with protons
by compensating for the differing attenuations of the different tissues; he concentrated, in a
scholarly fashion, on the mathematics of image reconstruction.
For his first experimental demonstration of CAT, Hounsfield obtained a lathe bed and
arranged it to rotate a collimated -ray source (americium-241) through about 1° every time
it traversed an object. The objects that he tried were bottles and bits of Perspex. After nine days
of scanning, he could obtain a sufficient number of readings to reconstruct a single image—a
process that occupied about two-and-a-half hours on the available computer. The method by
which these early pictures were produced was the algebraic reconstruction technique: in comparison with later Fourier-based methods, this was computationally rather inefficient.
So far, about £5000 had been spent—£2500 from the DoH and £2500 from EMI. The DoH
then gave £6000, which, matched by an equal sum from EMI, enabled Hounsfield to buy an
X-ray tube and generator. With this in place of the -ray source, the scanning time was reduced
to nine hours and it was possible to scan a coronal section of a brain specimen, although one
that had been removed from the skull. The result was encouraging: grey and white matter
could be distinguished. Hounsfield and his assistants Stephen Bates (programming), Peter
Langstone (electronics) and Mel King (mechanics) had achieved all this by the end of 1969 at
a total cost of about £25000. Moreover, although Hounsfield had shown some pictures—not
scans of living patients—at the European Congress of Radiology in Amsterdam in the summer of 1971, they had not excited much interest. There had been a postal strike in the UK at
the time and neither Hounsfield’s abstract nor his written paper were published. In short, there
was no inkling among the members of the medical community of the huge revolution within
which they were shortly to be embroiled.
The idea of concentrating on a head scanner emerged during discussions involving three
senior radiologists—Dr James Ambrose of Atkinson Morley Hospital, Dr Louis Kreel of
Northwick Park Hospital and Dr Frank Doyle of Hammersmith Hospital—and representatives
of the DoH. Hounsfield wanted to build a machine big enough to scan the body in cross-section,
but the radiologists and the DoH believed that it would be prudent to concentrate on the head. It
was felt that, whereas the head could be held still for the long time—by then, about 20 minutes—
that it took to acquire an image, voluntary and involuntary movement of the body during so long
a duration would spoil abdominal scans. The original concept was that there would be a few
machines in specialized neurosurgical units and that the data from these scanners would be sent
to EMI by telephone line for processing on the base computer there to produce the pictures,
which then would be sent back to the hospitals, again by telephone line, after a 10-minute delay.
The enthusiasm of Hounsfield, the radiological advisors and the DoH was not matched by
that of most of the representatives of the mass of the radiologists in the hospitals who were
given the opportunity to express an opinion. In Hounsfield’s own words, ‘they were so steeped
in their X-ray pictures that they couldn’t really grasp the importance of this at all. They couldn’t
grasp the sensitivity. They said, so what? They couldn’t understand that they would be seeing
much more. The result was very discouraging.’ The view of the Board at EMI was that the talk
was of a machine that would cost a hundred thousand pounds, that had not actually yet been
built and for which the potential customers could see no need.
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So this was not an attractive commercial proposition for EMI, whose business was certainly
not in the medical market. Discussions with the National Research Development Corporation,
a public body set up to fund just this kind of venture, were protracted but not fruitful.
Officially, the DoH could not allocate money for research in a commercial company.
Hounsfield estimated that £69000 would be needed to build a functional machine but that figure was commercially sensitive, as EMI would eventually want to sell the machines on the
open market. It was agreed that £150000 would be a reasonable selling price. It was fortunate
that the relevant part of the DoH was headed by Mr Gordon Higson, who had the vision to
take the risk of placing an order for three machines, even though not even a single one had yet
been built.
The first prototype machine was installed at the Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon,
South West London, in October 1971. Dr James Ambrose, the neuroradiologist at the hospital,
had been involved in the discussions that had led to the decision to build a head scanner rather
than a body scanner. It was Dr Ambrose’s commitment to the project, as well as the proximity
of Wimbledon to Hayes, where the EMI Central Research Laboratories were located, that made
the Atkinson Morley Hospital such an excellent clinical site for the work. The hospital was at
the forefront of neuroradiology, yet it was sufficiently far from the beaten track of the famous
hospitals in central London for it not to be the focus of visitors with prying eyes.
Dr Ambrose selected a lady with unknown pathology of the brain to be the first patient. In
Hounsfield’s own words,
when we took the picture [figure 1], there was beautiful picture of a circular cyst right in the middle of the
frontal lobe and, of course, it excited everyone in the hospital who knew about the project. I, of course,
thought, well, I’ve had this before, first time is always lucky and then everything else goes wrong after that.
So I thought, the next ones are not going to be any good, but they did about another ten more patients and
every one of them came out as being obvious diseases of the brain showing up in various forms. Dr Ambrose
found that, by injecting iodine-based contrast agent, that would localise the particular spot where the tumour
was and make it show up even better.
The first clinical images were presented by Hounsfield and Ambrose on 20 April 1972, at
the Annual Congress of the British Institute of Radiology—the oldest radiological society in
the world—which that year happened to be held at Imperial College, London. This event truly
ushered in the modern radiological era and, arguably, the era of modern medicine. The audience, although not large in number, was made up of some of the most influential figures in the
British radiological community. It is not going too far to say that they were stunned by what
they saw that day. After this, the venture really took off.
A minicomputer that could reconstruct an image in two minutes was provided with each
machine, so there was no need after all to send data to EMI for processing. The first three production scanners, which had been purchased by the DoH, were placed in Manchester Royal
Infirmary—where the radiologist Professor Ian Isherwood undertook outstanding pioneering
work—in Glasgow and at the Institute of Neurology in London. Two additional scanners were
made in the first batch: both went to the USA, one to the Mayo Clinic and one to
Massachusetts General Hospital. In the factory, everything was done very economically and
EMI started to sell machines for £250000 that cost less than one-third of that to build.
The first production machines were known as the CT1000. The cover of an advertising
brochure for a slightly later model, the CT1010, signed by Hounsfield, can be seen in figure
2. Very soon the company was inundated with orders. Perversely, however, the EMI Board
were not committed to the project.
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Figure 1. Computer-assisted tomogram of the first patient to be scanned at the Atkinson Morley Hospital in 1971.
A cyst is clearly visible in the right frontal lobe of the brain. The diagnosis was confirmed by the subsequent
surgical findings.
The brain scanners employed a water-filled rubber ring around the patient’s head, to reduce
the dynamic range of the detected X-rays and to provide a reference for calibrating the grey
scale of the display. By building a scanner with a larger aperture, it became possible to make
images of cross-sections of any part of the body. Hounsfield announced the existence of this
scanner at the First International Conference on CT Scanning, which was held in Bermuda in
1975, where he showed images of the abdomen of a pig. This announcement was greeted by
a standing ovation. A whole-body machine, the CT5000, was then installed at Northwick Park
Hospital in Harrow, North London. Thirty detectors were used and the image acquisition took
about 20 seconds—short enough for the patients to hold their breath. When the first pictures,
taken by the radiologist Dr Louis Kreel, were shown, floods of orders came in. The problem
was that EMI was not ready to make the machines in large numbers and, in any case, much
development work remained to be done. Even though EMI Medical was in embryonic existence, the design of the machines that were being manufactured was eight or nine months
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Figure 2. The cover of a brochure advertising the CT1010 head scanner, signed by Hounsfield at the request of
Dr Adrian Thomas.
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behind what was being done in the laboratory. It was not long before a laboratory scanner with
500 detectors had been built: these detectors rotated in a segment around the body and eliminated the need for the translational motion used in the earlier systems. In fact, optimizing the
trade-offs between the number of detectors, their stability and their calibration proved to be
one of the most difficult practical problems faced by Hounsfield at that time; the now commonly used solution of having a stationary ring of thousands of detectors with a rotating tube
was considered but not even patented, on account of its perceived impracticability.
Spurred on by the huge and rapid success of the CT scanner (the term ‘computer-assisted
tomography’ was soon replaced by the slicker ‘computed tomography’), EMI purchased ultrasound imaging companies and companies for X-ray therapy in the USA. As much as half of
all of EMI’s R&D efforts were, at one time, devoted to medical technologies. By then, EMI
had sold nearly 1000 scanners and they were costing up to US$1 million each. Rival manufacturers had to pay royalties of millions of pounds every year, or make one-off settlements,
and this income stream continued for at least a decade.
As the venture became larger, so the commercial risks became greater. Hounsfield at first
concurred with the establishment of a large EMI medical company in the USA. The justification was to circumvent the antitrust laws. After the CT1010 and CT5005 scanners had been
produced, EMI continued with the engineering and manufacture of head scanners at its facility in Radlett and of body scanners at Hayes. When it was realized that there was no commercial future for head-only scanners, hopes were pinned on the CT7070, a body scanner
being developed and built in the USA. Because of delays in this programme, the CT5005 was
repackaged as the CT7020 machine as an interim UK-built solution, using consoles developed
in the USA for the CT7070. This was more of a muddle than a success. Hounsfield predicted
that the venture would fail but the EMI Board ignored his advice, on the grounds that he was
‘technical’ and not ‘commercial’. By 1977, however, the situation was that EMI had been
overtaken by its US competitors and, in reality, EMI no longer had a commercially viable
product.
Despite all this disappointment, Hounsfield had begun to work on the then new technology
of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. By 1980, an EMI MRI scanner had been installed in
the Hammersmith Hospital in London.
EMI had by now been purchased by Thorn Electrical Industries. Thorn decided that they
did not want to be in the medical business at all. They sold everything—Hounsfield’s CT, MRI
and ultrasound. The CT went to Picker, a subsidiary of the British General Electric Company
Ltd. Hounsfield lamented, ‘I was just disheartened, the whole thing was just enough to make
you weep, it really was.’
THE SUBSEQUENT EVOLUTION OF CT SCANNING
Although Hounsfield’s day-to-day involvement with CT scanning effectively came to its end
in the late 1970s, the evolution of the device that he had invented has proceeded at an astonishing rate. Fast methods of image reconstruction have been developed. The numbers of detectors have multiplied. Machines that scan numerous slices simultaneously have been
developed. Scanners have been fitted into mobile trailers, to meet the needs of hospitals where
the workload does not justify having a fixed installation. A specialized system in which the
rotating X-ray tube has been replaced by a beam of electrons scanned around an annular target
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Figure 3. Hounsfield and his mother arriving at Buckingham Palace, on the occasion of
Hounsfield’s investiture as Knight Bachelor by Her Majesty The Queen.
in a vacuum enclosure has been developed for very-high-speed imaging. A technique by which
the patient is moved at a constant velocity through the scanning aperture has made it possible
to acquire three-dimensional images by helical scanning. CT images have been fused with
radionuclide images. Most recently, combined CT and radionuclide scanners have been introduced into clinical practice.
In the UK alone, there are now upwards of 500 CT scanners in clinical use—about 10 per
million population. The corresponding figure in Japan is more than 100 per million. About 50
million CT scans are now performed worldwide each year. The world market for CT scanners
is valued at about £500 million annually.
LATER YEARS
Hounsfield retired in 1984. He became a consultant to the Central Research Laboratories
(CRL) and continued in this role until about two years before his death, after Scipher plc had
acquired the CRL from Thorn-EMI in 1996. He had honorary appointments in several hospitals. He made it a general rule that he would accept invitations to scientific meetings ‘so long
as he did not actually have to do anything’.
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Despite the disappointments caused by the attitudes of the Board of EMI and, later, by the
disjuncture with the commercial interests of Thorn, Hounsfield was able to enjoy, in his modest way, the fruits of his achievements. He was the recipient of numerous honours, the principal of which are listed in the next section.
Because he had written so little, Hounsfield’s election to the Fellowship of the Royal
Society was in recognition of his inventions, which were accepted in lieu of published work.
On the occasion of his investiture as Knight Bachelor by Her Majesty The Queen at
Buckingham Palace, Hounsfield’s mother was there to celebrate her son’s achievement (figure 3).
Hounsfield presented lectures worldwide, especially in the USA. He said that public speaking did not come naturally to him; he asked Allan Cormack to respond for both of them after
the banquet celebrating the award of the Nobel Prize. But physicians, scientists, engineers and
the general public flocked to hear the man who, virtually single-handedly, had changed the
face of medicine.
Despite his fame and the wealth that it brought, Hounsfield lived frugally. He spent very
little on himself. He acknowledged that, because he was a bachelor, he was able to devote a
great deal of his time to his general interests in science and, latterly, also in physics and biology. It was not until the mid-1970s that he bothered to establish a permanent residence for
himself. He admitted to spending a little of his Nobel Prize money on fitting out the living
room of his new but small semi-detached house in Middlesex with some scientific equipment.
He saved the money from the MacRobert Award in case some new research idea should crop
up, so that he would be able to fund its investigation himself. Apart from his work, his greatest pleasures were mainly out-of-doors. Although his brother Paul was an Anglican priest, he
does not seem to have had any strong religious convictions. In his earlier days he enjoyed skiing. Until ill-health intervened, he was always a walker and a leader of cross-country rambles.
He was fond of music, whether light or classical. He was a self-taught piano player who was
perhaps at his best with jazz. The bequests in his will were to family members, with the exception of a substantial benefaction to the British Institute of Radiology to maintain the annual Sir
Godfrey Hounsfield Lecture, the first of which had been delivered in 1997.
Towards the end of his life, Hounsfield’s physical health deteriorated, as he suffered from
pulmonary fibrosis. Happily, he always retained his intellectual faculties. He died on
12 August 2004 at Kingston upon Thames in Surrey, universally recognized as one of
mankind’s greatest twentieth-century benefactors.
HONOURS
1972
1974
1975
1976
MacRobert Award, Royal Academy of Engineering
Barclay Prize, British Institute of Radiology (jointly with Dr James Ambrose)
Wilhelm-Exner Medal, Amsterdam Industrial Association
Ziedses des Plantes Medal, Physikalisch Medizinische Gesellschaft
Fellow of the Royal Society
Prince Philip Medal, City and Guilds of London Institute
Lasker Award (jointly with Dr William Oldendorf)
Doctor of Medicine honoris causa, Universität Basel
Commander of the Order of the British Empire
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1977
1979
1980
1981
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Biographical Memoirs
Duddell Medal, Institute of Physics
Golden Plate Award, American Academy of Achievement
Churchill Gold Medal, Society of Engineers
Gairdner Foundation Award of Merit
Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians
Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Radiologists
Honorary Doctor of Science, London University
Honorary Doctor of Science, City University
Honorary Doctor of Science, Council for National Academic Awards
Honorary Doctor of Technology, Loughborough University
Mullard Medal, the Royal Society
Silvanus Thompson Medal, British Institute of Radiology
Honorary Doctor of Science, Manchester University
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (jointly with Dr Allan Cormack)
Amrrogino d’oro Award, City of Milan
Deutsche Röntgen Plakette, Deutsche Röntgen Museum
Knight Bachelor
Honorary Fellow, Royal Academy of Engineering
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Mrs Liz Beckmann, Professor Ian Isherwood and Dr Adrian Thomas kindly commented on drafts of this memoir
during its preparation.
The frontispiece photograph is reproduced by permission of EMI Archives. Figures 1, 2 and 3 were kindly
provided by Dr Adrian Thomas and are reproduced by permission of the British Institute of Radiology.
SOURCE MATERIALS
Many sources provided fragments for this memoir, the most significant of which include the
following.
Isherwood, I. 2005 In memoriam. Radiology 234, 975–976.
Nobel Foundation 1979 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1979/
Obituaries: the Daily Telegraph, 17 August 2004; The Times, 18 August 2004; the Guardian, 19 August 2004; the
Financial Times, 20 August 2004; and the Independent, 20 August 2004.
Personal communications: Mrs Liz Beckmann, Professor Ian Isherwood, Mr Peter Langstone, Dr Adrian Thomas and
Mr Richard Waltham.
Tansey, E. M., Christie, D. A. & Reynolds, L. A. (eds) 1998 Making the human body transparent: the impact of
nuclear magnetic resonance and magnetic resonance imaging. In Wellcome witnesses to twentieth century
medicine, vol. 2, pp. 1–66. London: Wellcome Trust.
Transcript of an interview. 1991 Sir Godfrey Hounsfield in discussion with Bill Ingham, former Director of EMI
Central Research Laboratories. London: Royal Society.
Webb, S. 1990 From the watching of the shadows. Bristol: Adam Hilger.
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Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield
235
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In comparison with his academic peers, Hounsfield had few publications, apart from his
many patents. Although what follows may not be a complete listing, there cannot be many
omissions.
(1)
(2)
1968–1972
1971–1973
(3)
1973
(4)
1973
(5)
1973–1975a
(6)
(7)
(8)
1973–1975b
1973–1977
1974–1975a
(9)
1974–1975b
(10)
1974–1976a
(11)
(12)
(13)
(14)
(15)
(16)
(17)
(18)
1974–1976b
1974–1976c
1974–1976d
1974–1977
1975–1977
1976
1976
1976
(19)
1979
(20)
(21)
1980
1982
A method of and apparatus for measuring X or gamma radiation. UK Patent 1283915.
Method and apparatus for measuring X or gamma radiation absorption or transmission at plural angles and analyzing the data. US Patent 3778614.
Computerized transverse axial scanning (tomography). 1. Description of system. Br. J. Radiol
46, 1016–1022.
(With J. Ambrose) Computerized transverse axial tomography. [Abstract.] Br. J. Radiol 46,
148–149.
Penetrating radiation examining apparatus in combination with body locating structure. US
Patent 3881110.
Penetrating radiation examining apparatus having a scanning collimator. US Patent 3866047.
Improvements in or relating to radiography. UK Patent 1468810.
Method of and apparatus for examining a body by radiation such as X or gamma radiation. US
Patent 3919552.
Method of and apparatus for examining a body by radiation such as X or gamma radiation. US
Patent 3924131.
Apparatus for examining a body by radiation such as X or gamma radiation. US Patent
3944833.
Radiography. US Patent 3934142.
Apparatus for examining objects by means of penetrating radiation. US Patent 3940625.
Apparatus for examining a body by means of penetrating radiation. US Patent 3999073.
Radiography. US Patent 40355647.
Data acquisition in tomography. US Patent 4002911.
Picture quality of computed tomography. Am. J. Roentgen. 127, 3–9.
Historical notes on computerized axial tomography. J. Can. Assoc. Radiol. 27, 135–142.
(With A. K. Ommaya, G. Murray, J. Ambrose & A. Richardson) Computerized axial tomography: estimation of spatial and density resolution capability. Br. J. Radiol 49, 604–611.
Computed medical imaging. In Nobel lectures in physiology or medicine 1971–1980 (ed. J.
Lindsten), pp. 568–586. London: World Scientific Publishing.
Computed medical imaging. (Reprint of Nobel Lecture.) Med. Phys. 7, 283–290.
Computed medical imaging. (Reprint of Nobel Lecture.) Science 210, 22–28.
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