保罗·劳特伯1929—2007

劳特伯于1963年至1985年担任石溪大学的教授，他在那里为MRI的发展进行了研究。1985年，他与妻子琼一起成为伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校的教授，直到他在厄巴纳去世。他从未停止与本科生的研究工作，他担任化学教授，并在生物工程、生物物理学、厄巴纳-香槟的医学院和高级研究中心的计算生物学中任职。

Paul Christian Lauterbur (May 6, 1929 – March 27, 2007) was an American chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003 with Peter Mansfield for his work which made the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) possible.

Lauterbur was a professor at Stony Brook University from 1963 until 1985, where he conducted his research for the development of the MRI. In 1985 he became a professor along with his wife Joan Dawson at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for 22 years until his death in Urbana. He and Dawson established the Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Laboratory (BMRL) there. He never stopped working with undergraduates on research, and he served as a professor of chemistry, with appointments in bioengineering, biophysics, the College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign and computational biology at the Center for Advanced Study.

Early life

Lauterbur was of Luxembourgish ancestry. Born and raised in Sidney, Ohio, Lauterbur graduated from Sidney High School, where a new Chemistry, Physics, and Biology wing was dedicated in his honor. As a teenager, he built his own laboratory in the basement of his parents' house. His chemistry teacher at school understood that he enjoyed experimenting on his own, so the teacher allowed him to do his own experiments at the back of class.

Education and career

Lauterbur received a BS in chemistry from the Case Institute of Technology, now part of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he became a Brother of the Alpha Delta chapter of Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. He then went to work at the Mellon Institute laboratories of the Dow Corning Corporation, with a 2-year break to serve at the Army Chemical Center in Edgewood, Maryland. While working at Mellon Institute he pursued graduate studies in chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. Earning his PhD in 1962, the following year Lauterbur accepted a position as associate professor at Stony Brook University.

The development of the MRI

Lauterbur credits the idea of the MRI to a brainstorm one day at a suburban Pittsburgh Eat'n Park Big Boy Restaurant, with the MRI's first model scribbled on a table napkin while he was a student and researcher at both the University of Pittsburgh and the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research. The further research that led to the Nobel Prize was performed at Stony Brook University in the 1970s.

The Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952, which went to Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell, was for the development of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), the scientific principle behind MRI.

Nobel Prize

Lauterbur was awarded the Nobel Prize along with Mansfield in the fall of 2003. Controversy occurred when Raymond Damadian took out full-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times headlined "The Shameful Wrong That Must Be Righted" saying that the Nobel committee had not included him as a Prize winner alongside Lauterbur and Mansfield for his early work on the MRI. Damadian said that he discovered MRI and the two Nobel-winning scientists refined his technology.

Death

Lauterbur died aged 77 in March 2007 of kidney disease at his home in Urbana, Illinois. University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman said, "Paul's influence is felt around the world every day, every time an MRI saves the life of a daughter or a son, a mother or a father."

Other awards and honors

• Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, 1984
• General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Kettering Prize, 1985
• Gairdner Foundation International Award, 1985
• The Harvey Prize, 1986
• National Medal of Science, 1987
• National Medal of Technology, 1988, (with Raymond Damadian)
• Bower Award, Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, 1990 (first recipient)

Carnegie Mellon Dickson Prize in Science in 1993.

NAS Award for Chemistry in Service to Society of the National Academy of Sciences, 2001

Charter member, Phi Kappa Tau Hall of Fame in 2006.

National Inventors Hall of Fame, class of 2007