Peter Mansfield

Peter Mansfield
Born	Peter Mansfield 9 10, 1933
Birthplace	Lambeth, London, England
Died	Template:Death date and age Nottingham, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Physicist
Employer	University of Nottingham
Known for	Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
Education	PhD, Queen Mary College, University of London
Children	2
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2003) Fellow of the Royal Society (1987) Knight Bachelor (1993)

Sir Peter Mansfield FRS (9 October 1933 – 8 February 2017) was an English physicist whose groundbreaking research into nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) led to the development of techniques fundamental to modern magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Born into modest circumstances in Lambeth, south London, Mansfield rose from an early life marked by wartime disruption and limited educational expectations to become one of the most consequential figures in medical physics. His work on the use of magnetic field gradients for spatial encoding of NMR signals, and in particular his development of the echo-planar imaging (EPI) technique, transformed MRI from a slow experimental procedure into a rapid, practical diagnostic tool used in hospitals worldwide. For these contributions, Mansfield shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with American chemist Paul Lauterbur. A professor at the University of Nottingham for more than three decades, Mansfield was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1987 and received a knighthood in 1993. His rise from humble origins to founding father of MRI has been described as "an inspirational and remarkable story."

Early Life

Peter Mansfield was born on 9 October 1933 in Lambeth, a borough in south London, to Sidney George Mansfield and Lillian Rose Turner. He grew up in humble circumstances during a period of considerable upheaval in Britain. The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 had a profound effect on his childhood; like many London children, he experienced the disruption caused by the Blitz and wartime rationing.

Mansfield's early education was interrupted and limited by the war years. According to his own autobiographical account written for the Nobel Foundation, his school years were not marked by academic distinction, and his teachers did not encourage him to pursue further education. He left school at the age of fifteen without qualifications, a common experience for working-class boys in post-war London. Despite this unpromising start, Mansfield harboured an early fascination with science, particularly rocketry, which he pursued through self-education and reading.

After leaving school, Mansfield took a position as a printer's assistant. He subsequently worked in various roles before finding employment at the Rocket Propulsion Establishment in Westcott, Buckinghamshire, a government research facility. This position proved pivotal, as it exposed him to scientific work and reinforced his desire to pursue a career in science. The experience at Westcott encouraged him to obtain the formal qualifications he had missed during his school years, and he began studying for examinations that would allow him entry to university.

Mansfield's determination to overcome the educational disadvantages of his upbringing would later become a prominent element of his personal narrative. In interviews and speeches, he reflected on how unlikely his path to a Nobel Prize had seemed, given his early circumstances.

Education

Mansfield entered Queen Mary College, University of London, as a mature student, having obtained the necessary qualifications through evening classes and further study after his period of employment. At Queen Mary College, he studied physics and developed a strong interest in nuclear magnetic resonance, an area of physics that had emerged from the work of Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell in the 1940s.

He continued at Queen Mary College for his doctoral research under the supervision of Jack Powles, a specialist in NMR techniques. Mansfield's PhD thesis, titled Proton magnetic resonance relaxation in solids by transient methods, was completed in 1962. The thesis examined the behaviour of proton spins in solid materials using pulsed NMR methods, laying the groundwork for his later career in magnetic resonance research.

Career

Early Academic Career

Following the completion of his doctorate in 1962, Mansfield undertook postdoctoral research in the United States before returning to the United Kingdom. He joined the University of Nottingham's Department of Physics, where he would spend the remainder of his academic career. At Nottingham, he initially continued research into fundamental NMR phenomena in solids, building on the work from his PhD.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mansfield turned his attention to the problem of using NMR signals to obtain spatial information about the internal structure of objects. This area of inquiry would prove to be his most consequential contribution to science.

Development of MRI Techniques

The development of MRI as a practical imaging technology involved contributions from several researchers, but Mansfield's work was central to making the technology fast enough for clinical use. In 1973, Paul Lauterbur, working independently in the United States, published a paper describing the use of magnetic field gradients to create two-dimensional images from NMR signals — a technique he called "zeugmatography." Around the same time, Mansfield and his colleagues at Nottingham were developing related but distinct approaches to the same problem.

Mansfield's key contributions included showing how the NMR signal could be mathematically analysed using techniques from solid-state physics — specifically, how the relationship between the applied magnetic field gradients and the resulting signals could be understood in terms of reciprocal space, or k-space. This theoretical framework provided a rigorous mathematical basis for the reconstruction of images from NMR data and became fundamental to the field of MRI physics.

Perhaps Mansfield's most important single contribution was the development of echo-planar imaging (EPI), a technique he first proposed in 1977. Conventional MRI at the time required the repeated application of magnetic field gradient pulses and the collection of data over many separate excitation cycles, making the process slow — sometimes requiring many minutes to acquire a single image. EPI, by contrast, allowed an entire image to be captured following a single excitation of the nuclear spins, dramatically reducing acquisition time. In principle, EPI could produce an image in a fraction of a second, opening the door to real-time imaging of moving structures such as the beating heart.

The practical implementation of EPI required overcoming substantial technical challenges, including the need for rapidly switching magnetic field gradients and the development of specialised hardware. Mansfield and his research group at Nottingham worked for years to refine the technique and address problems such as image distortion caused by magnetic field inhomogeneities. The development of EPI is considered a landmark achievement because it enabled not only faster clinical imaging but also entirely new applications of MRI, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which maps brain activity by detecting changes in blood oxygenation.

Self-Experimentation

In a notable episode during the development of MRI, Mansfield volunteered his own body for early imaging experiments. At a time when the safety of exposing humans to strong magnetic fields and radiofrequency pulses was not fully established, Mansfield placed himself inside one of the prototype MRI machines at the University of Nottingham to demonstrate that the technique could safely produce images of the human body. These early whole-body scans, conducted in the late 1970s, were among the first MRI images of a living human subject and helped to establish confidence in the safety and potential clinical utility of the technology.

University of Nottingham

Mansfield was appointed to a chair in physics at the University of Nottingham, where he became a professor. He led a research group that became one of the leading centres for MRI research in the world. Over several decades, the group at Nottingham contributed numerous advances in MRI pulse sequence design, hardware development, and applications of the technology to medicine and materials science.

Following his retirement from active teaching and administration, Mansfield continued to be associated with the university. The Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre at the University of Nottingham was named in his honour and continues to be a major centre for imaging research. In 2025, building work commenced on a new national MRI facility at the University of Nottingham, further solidifying the institution's legacy in MRI research that Mansfield helped to establish.

Patents

In addition to his academic publications, Mansfield was named as an inventor on a number of patents related to MRI technology. These patents covered various aspects of MRI hardware and imaging methods.

Personal Life

Peter Mansfield married, and he and his wife had two children. He was known to be a private individual who preferred to let his scientific work speak for itself. Despite the fame that accompanied his Nobel Prize, Mansfield maintained a relatively low public profile.

In his Nobel Banquet speech, delivered on 10 December 2003, Mansfield addressed the assembled dignitaries and fellow laureates, reflecting on the journey that had brought him from wartime London to the ceremony in Stockholm.

Mansfield lived in Nottingham for the majority of his adult life, having settled there upon joining the university faculty. He passed away on 8 February 2017 in Nottingham at the age of 83. His death was reported by major news outlets worldwide, reflecting his status as one of the most important figures in modern medical science.

Recognition

Nobel Prize

On 6 October 2003, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced that Peter Mansfield and Paul Lauterbur had been jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging." The Nobel Committee cited Mansfield's contributions to the theoretical understanding of how magnetic field gradients could be used for rapid imaging and his development of echo-planar imaging as a technique that made MRI practical for medical use.

The award was notable in that it was given in the category of Physiology or Medicine rather than Physics or Chemistry, reflecting the profound impact that MRI had on clinical medicine and diagnostics. MRI had by 2003 become one of the most important diagnostic tools in medicine, used to image the brain, spinal cord, joints, heart, and many other organs and tissues without the use of ionising radiation.

Other Honours

Mansfield was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1987, one of the highest honours in British science. In 1993, he was awarded a knighthood, becoming Sir Peter Mansfield, in recognition of his services to physics and medicine.

The Institute of Physics established the Peter Mansfield Prize, awarded for distinguished contributions to medical physics and biomedical engineering. In 2025, Professor Jim Wild of the University of Sheffield was awarded the prize for his work on lung imaging research, demonstrating the continued influence of Mansfield's legacy on the field.

The minor planet 262972 Mansfield was named in his honour by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.

Legacy

Peter Mansfield's contributions to science and medicine are measured most directly by the global ubiquity of MRI. By the early 21st century, tens of thousands of MRI scanners were in use in hospitals and clinics around the world, performing tens of millions of scans each year. The technology enables non-invasive visualisation of soft tissue structures with a level of detail that was previously impossible without surgery, and it does so without exposing patients to ionising radiation, unlike X-ray or CT scan imaging.

Mansfield's echo-planar imaging technique, in particular, had consequences that extended far beyond its original purpose of speeding up clinical scans. EPI became the technical foundation for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which emerged in the 1990s as a powerful tool for studying brain function. By enabling the rapid acquisition of images sensitive to blood oxygenation levels, EPI made it possible to map which regions of the brain become active during specific tasks or stimuli. fMRI has since become one of the principal tools of cognitive neuroscience and has contributed to advances in the understanding of neurological and psychiatric disorders.

The Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre at the University of Nottingham continues to operate as a leading research facility in the field of medical imaging. The establishment of a new national MRI facility at Nottingham, announced in 2025, further extends the institutional legacy that Mansfield helped to build. The centre houses advanced MRI systems and supports research across physics, engineering, and clinical medicine.

Mansfield's biographical memoir, published by the Royal Society in 2021, described his journey as "inspirational" and noted that his work fundamentally changed the practice of diagnostic medicine. His story — from a boy who left school at fifteen without qualifications to a Nobel laureate whose invention is used in every major hospital in the world — remains a striking example of how scientific talent, combined with persistence, can emerge from the most unpromising beginnings.