Peter Mansfield left school at 15 to work as a printer’s assistant. Four decades later, the physicist was sharing the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The distance between those points was bridged by night classes, university research and a series of advances that made it possible to turn magnetic signals into images of the body.

A route into physics

Mansfield was born in Lambeth, London, on 9 October 1933, the youngest of three sons. His parents were Sidney George Mansfield and Lillian Rose Mansfield, née Turner. He grew up in Camberwell. During the Second World War he was evacuated from London, first to Sevenoaks and then, on two occasions, to Torquay, where he stayed with the same family.

Back in London after the war, he was advised to sit the 11-plus examination. He had not heard of it before and had no time to prepare; he did not gain a place at the local grammar school, but his mark was sufficient for a Central School in Peckham. At 15, a careers teacher told him that science was not for him. Mansfield left school soon afterwards and became a printer’s assistant.

His next steps took him towards science by a less direct route. At 18, interested in rocketry, he joined the Rocket Propulsion Department of the Ministry of Supply at Westcott, Buckinghamshire. After 18 months he was called up for National Service. When his two years in the army were over, he returned to Westcott and studied for A-levels at night school. He then won a place to study physics at Queen Mary College, University of London.

Mansfield graduated with a BSc in 1959. For his final-year project, under the supervision of Jack Powles, he built a portable, transistor-based spectrometer to measure the Earth’s magnetic field. Powles invited him to join his nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) research group. Mansfield’s project there was to construct a pulsed NMR spectrometer for studying solid polymer systems. He received his PhD in 1962 for a thesis on proton magnetic resonance relaxation in solids.

From magnetic resonance to images

After completing his doctorate, Mansfield worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Charlie Slichter at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, studying doped metals with NMR. In 1964 he returned to England to take up a lectureship at the University of Nottingham. He continued research into multiple-pulse NMR, progressing to senior lecturer in 1968 and reader in 1970. Grants from the Medical Research Council helped his team develop MRI equipment.

NMR had long been used to study the properties of materials, but producing images of the body required new ways to encode and interpret the signals. Developments by Mansfield and Paul Lauterbur in the 1970s helped make that possible. Mansfield is credited with developing the mathematical analysis that made MRI signals useful as images, and with the technique known as slice selection: choosing a localised section of the body to image rather than imaging the whole subject at once.

He also developed echo-planar imaging, a method that made MRI scans much faster. Its speed helped make functional MRI, or fMRI, feasible. These were not simply refinements to an established medical instrument: they addressed the practical problem of how to acquire and interpret magnetic-resonance data as usable images.

In 1979 Mansfield became professor in Nottingham’s Department of Physics, a post he held until retiring in 1994. The university’s work produced a full-body prototype scanner, installed shortly before Christmas 1978. Mansfield volunteered to be tested in the machine and produced the first scan of a live patient. The prototype is now an exhibit in the Science Museum’s Medical Section.

Recognition and remembrance

Mansfield’s work was recognised across physics and medical imaging. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1987 and knighted in 1993. In 2003 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Lauterbur for discoveries concerning MRI. The Nobel recognised a body of work that had made magnetic resonance imaging practical, including methods for selecting image slices, interpreting signals and collecting them more rapidly.

Other honours included the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine’s Gold Medal in 1983, the Duddell Medal and Prize in 1988, and the Royal Society’s Mullard Award in 1990, shared with John Mallard and Jim Hutchinson. In 2009 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award presented by Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Pride of Britain Awards. In 2016 the asteroid 262972 Petermansfield was named in his honour.

Mansfield married Jean Margaret Kibble in 1962; they had two daughters. He died in Nottingham on 8 February 2017, aged 83. His life’s work remains associated with the University of Nottingham, where decades of research helped establish the techniques that made MRI a tool for medical imaging.

Why Peter Mansfield deserves a place in British Legacy

Mansfield’s place in British Legacy rests on a specific scientific achievement: he helped make magnetic resonance signals into images that could be used to examine the human body. At Nottingham, his research contributed to methods for selecting a slice of the body, interpreting the radio signals and collecting data more quickly. Those advances helped move MRI from a research possibility towards a workable imaging technology. The 1978 full-body prototype gives that story a tangible point of reference: Mansfield tested it himself, and the machine is now preserved in the Science Museum.

His route into physics also gives the story its human scale. Leaving school at 15 and working as a printer’s assistant did not determine the limits of his education. Night study, National Service, a return to technical work and university training brought him into a field in which he would make lasting contributions. His career was rooted in British institutions, from Queen Mary College to the University of Nottingham, and its impact was recognised internationally through the Nobel Prize shared with Lauterbur. Remembering Mansfield is therefore not only a celebration of an award. It is an account of how persistent experimental and mathematical work in Britain helped create a new way to see inside the body.

Sources

Peter Mansfield — Wikipedia revision 1378664852

Adapted in part from Peter Mansfield by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.