
14/08/2025
The wonderfully named Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield was an electrical engineer who in 1979 shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Allan MacLeod Cormack for his part in developing the diagnostic technique of X-ray computed tomography.
He came up with the idea that you could determine what was inside a box by taking X-ray readings at all angles around the object. He then set to work constructing a computer that could take input from X-rays at various angles to create an image of the object in "slices". Applying this idea to the medical field led him to propose what is now known as computed tomography.
He came up with his idea while taking part in his favorite hobby hillwalking.