science · 23 February 1924 · 100 years ago
birth
Born 23 Feb 1924; died 7 May 1998 at age 74.
South African-born American physicist who formulated the mathematical algorithms that made possible the development of a powerful new diagnostic technique, the cross-sectional X-ray imaging process known as computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanning. He first described this in two papers in 1963 and 1964. X-ray tomography is a process by which a picture of an imaginary slice through an object (or the human body) is built up from information from detectors rotating around the body. For this work, he was awarded a share (with Sir Gregory Hounsfield) of the 1979 Nobel Prize. Cormack was unusual in the field of Nobel laureates because he never earned a doctorate degree in medicine or any other field of science.
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