SIR PETER MANSFIELD, Britain’s latest Nobel prize-winner, left school at 15 with no qualifications, aiming to become a printer.

Fortunately for millions of patients whose treatment has been enhanced by his development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), his scientific curiosity had been kindled by the V1 flying bombs and the V2 rockets that fell on London in 1944, when he was 11.

“Like all the boys at the time, I was interested — I used to collect shrapnel,” he said yesterday. “One or two fell quite close.” But, when he left school, he went to become a compositor at a printing works in the City of London.

By the age of 19 he had taught himself a lot about weapons and explosives, and went to work at the Rocket Propulsion Department, part of the Ministry of Supply, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, as a scientific assistant.

His National Service was spent not in the engineers or an ordnance unit, as he would have preferred, but with true army logic in the stores of the Royal Army Service Corps. When he was demobbed, he studied for A levels and won a degree and a doctorate in physics from Queen Mary College (QMC) in East London.

His entire career, virtually without interruption, was spent at the University of Nottingham. He will be 70 on Thursday, and has now retired. He shares the prize with Paul Lauterbur of the University of Illinois. Each will receive half of £800,000.

The technique that they developed — painless, safe, and highly effective — enables images to be created of the inside of the body, aiding diagnosis and treatment of a host of different conditions. Sir Peter’s doctorate at QMC had been in nuclear magnetic resonance, then being used simply for the study of chemical structure.

The technique depends on the fact that the nuclei of atoms have a spin that can be controlled by a powerful magnetic field. The spinning nuclei orientate themselves in the magnetic field and can absorb radio energy.

When they return to their original state, they emit radio waves that convey information about their environment — that is, the chemical structure they find themselves in. In effect, the nuclei of atoms are being used as tiny radio transmitters to broadcast information about themselves.

Along with Professor Lauterbur, he developed the technique for use in medical imaging. The method works because the body is largely composed of water, and hydrogen atoms — two to every molecule of water — are the best resonators of all.

Professor Lauterbur showed in 1973 that adding a gradient to the magnetic field makes possible very precise distinctions, and Sir Peter showed how the signals could be analysed and converted into an image.

The first fuzzy images were created in the mid-1970s, at a time when Sir Peter now admits that he had not realised the technique’s full potential.

“I had people asking if it would work for the whole body, and saying that, if we managed it, the images would be clear enough for medical use. We just had to be persistent about it.”

He went on to make further huge improvements in the technique, including increasing its speed enormously so that changes in organs such as the brain could be followed in real time. The technique became known as magnetic resonance imaging, the nuclear word disappearing lest patients should think that the technique had anything to do with nuclear weapons or nuclear energy.

In its citation, the Nobel Assembly said that the development of MRI represented a breakthrough in medical diagnostics and research. Painless, harmless, and productive of the most brilliant images, it has enabled us to see our insides without danger or the need for surgery.

After learning about the prize, Sir Peter said: “It is, I suppose, every scientist’s hope that one day they may be singled out for such an honour, but I must say that in my case I did think about it a few years ago, but then dismissed it.

“The reaction was one of shock. The time I heard was in a phone call at home and at first of all I didn’t believe it. Then I had a second call from Stockholm and, I guess, then I had to believe it.

“It was a strange but pleasant experience and I am grateful they have looked to us here in Nottingham. This is a great honour for me, a great honour for British science in general and especially for the people who are continuing to work in this area at the University of Nottingham.”

Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council (MRC), which funded Sir Peter’s research from 1976 to 1997, said: “Professor Mansfield’s work is an excellent example of how high-risk research can really pay off.

“When the MRC first funded Sir Peter in the 1970s, we really didn’t know if the huge investment in this area would bear fruit. In fact, it surpassed all hopes. I’m delighted to congratulate him on his achievement today. His work is correctly credited with changing the face of modern medicine.”

Britain's winning streak

BRITAIN is enjoying a brilliant spell of Nobel Prizes in Medicine, having shared the prize in each of the past three years. Not since the early 1960s has there been such a run. Britain’s winners in this category in recent years:

1960: Peter Medawar (with Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Australia)

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