Historical Report on Paul Lauterbur

Historical Report on Paul Lauterbur Paul Lauterbur was born right here in Sidney, Ohio in 1929. He attended Case Institute of Technology where he majored in chemistry. After graduating with his Bachelor’s degree, he started working for Dow Corning Corporation in their Mellon Institute Laboratories. While working he took graduate courses at the University of Pittsburgh for free where he later received his PhD degree in 1962. During his studies, he learned about nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).Then he was drafted into the Army from 1954-1955 then left to work at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He realized new images could be made from NMR. Lauterbur’s breakthrough idea was to vary the strength of the magnetic field over the object which in turn emitted various radio waves that could be turned into images . Then he turned to using these variances on clams and green peppers in the beginning. This displayed different types of tissues in the images which lat er was used to distinguish between healthy tissue and tumors. In 2003, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.Not only did he have breakthroughs in imaging NMR, but in non-imaging NMR spectroscopy proving a method for the investigation of matter. Paul received many more awards during his life including the Gold Medal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, US National Medal of Technology, US National Medal of Science, and Roentgen Medal. Sources http://nobelprize. org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2003/lauterbur-cv. html http://nobelprize. org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2003/lauterbur. html http://www. rsc. org/chemistryworld/issues/2007/May/PaulLauterbur. asp