深情的纪念
英国著名物理学家彼得·曼斯菲尔德因创新核磁共振成像（MRI）技术应用，并由此制造出MRI影像检测设备，奠定了当代医学影像诊断学最具有革命性的发明。
MRI不仅辅助医生诊断肿瘤，而且清晰地检查脑部和内脏软组织器官影像。在临床试验验证MRI设备安全和有效性时，曼斯菲尔德本人既是MRI发明家，也是第一位受试者参加了安全性测试。
1993年，英国女王授予他爵士头衔。2003年，他和Paul Lauterbur教授（纽约州立大学）分享了诺贝尔医学或生理学奖。当时临床影像诊断上早已开始普及应用MRI设备，并完成了上百万次临床图像检查。
出身于伦敦贫民区的曼斯菲尔德少年时，他的老师并不看好他的科学天赋，甚至认为他的一生就是普普通通打印技工而已。之所以能有如此的人生，如此的创新天赋和能力，还需要进一步了解关于核磁共振发明人的故事。
彼得·曼斯菲尔德爵士，国际著名物理学家，诺贝尔医学或生理学奖获得者，MRI发明人之一。2017年2月8日逝世，享年83岁。
彼得·曼斯菲尔德的童年
Peter Mansfield, Nobel laureate who helped develop the MRI machine, dies at 83 on Feb. 8.
Peter Mansfield was born Oct.9, 1933, grew up in a London slum. His father was a gas fitter, his mother a waitress. Thefamily often lived in poverty.
Dr. Mansfield was told by a school guidance counselor that he had no future in science, was a printer’s apprentice before his curiosity and determination led him to a life in science.
He attended night school and at18 found a job with the rocket propulsion department of Britain’s SupplyMinistry. After serving two years in the British army, he received ascholarship and studied physics at what was then Queen Mary College at theUniversity of London. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1959 and a doctoratein 1962.
Dr.Mansfield spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University ofIllinois before joining the University of Nottingham faculty in 1964. Heretired in 1994 but continued to work at his laboratory for many years after.
In the 1970s, he devised methods to produce three-dimensional images from MRI machines that allowed physicians to peer into the inner workings of the body in real time.
2003年获诺贝尔医学或生理学奖
Before noninvasive MRI machines came into widespread use in the 1980s, patients often underwent potentially dangerous X-ray examinations or had tissue surgically removed for study. Dr. Mansfield volunteered to be the first person to undergo an MRI scan to proveits effectiveness and safety.
“His work is correctly credited with changing the face of modern medicine,” Colin Blakemore, chief executive of Britain’s Medical Research Council.
By the time Dr. Mansfield was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, which he shared with the U.S. scientist Paul Lauterbur, millions of MRI scans were being conducted each year on patients around the world.
The science behind MRI has beenknown since the 1940s, when physicists discovered that the nuclei in certainatoms spin in predictable ways when subjected to a magnetic field. The nucleialso gain energy when exposed to radio waves. When the radio waves are turnedoff, the nuclei continue to emit radio signals that can be measured and used toidentify different atomic structures.
早期研究工作和开创性探索
Dr. Mansfield had focused hisearly research on using those principles to identify objects beneath theEarth’s surface. But in the early 1970s, he learned that Lauterbur, then at theState University of New York at Stony Brook, had used MRI techniques to producetwo-dimensional images.
By measuring signals fromhydrogen atoms, Lauterbur was able to draw a visual distinction betweenordinary water and “heavy water,” which has a different atomic structure. Helater produced internal images of living clams and mice.
Dr. Mansfield built onLauterbur’s discoveries, using mathematical methods to develop fast, efficientways to transform the magnetically charged atomic radio signals intothree-dimensional images. In time, MRI scans could be used to identifydifferent tissues and organs throughout the body, becoming immensely importantin medicine.
Dr. Mansfield built onLauterbur’s discoveries, using mathematical methods to develop fast, efficientways to transform the magnetically charged atomic radio signals intothree-dimensional images. In time, MRI scans could be used to identifydifferent tissues and organs throughout the body, becoming immensely importantin medicine.
He held patents on several keyparts of the MRI machine, which made him well off. He was knighted in 1993 andpublished an autobiography, “The Long Road to Stockholm,” in 2013.
“Most people don’t think about where MRIscanners come from” Dr. Mansfield told Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper in2009. “But I feel very pleased and proud when I receive letters from patients, thanking me for saving their lives.”
关于获诺贝尔奖的是是非非
Soon after it was announcedthat Drs. Mansfield and Lauterbur had won the Nobel Prize, another early MRIresearcher, Raymond Damadian, took out full-page advertisements in TheWashington Post and New York Times headlined “The Shameful Wrong That Must Be Righted.”
Damadian, the founder of a U.S. company that produces MRImachines, complained that his contributions had been slighted andcharged the Nobel committee with an “inexcusable disregard for the truth.”
Mostexperts accused Damadian of sour grapes and said the modern MRI grew directlyout of the discoveries of Lauterbur and Dr. Mansfield.
“In my opinion, Drs. Lauterbur and Mansfield deserve the Nobel Prize,” Alex Pines, a scientist at the Universityof California at Berkeley, told The Post in 2003. “In a leap of creativegenius, they came up with the gradient imaging methodology that forms the basisfor what today is known as MRI.”
（英文原文来自华盛顿邮报）
2013年，彼得·曼斯菲尔德出版了自传《通往斯德哥尔摩的漫长道路》，想必在追忆自己的“蜀道难，难于上青天”一生的坎坷经历。
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