Raymond Damadian

Professor Raymond Vahan Damadian (born March 16 1936), is an American pioneer of magnetic resonance imaging.

Damadian was born in New York. He is of Melville, New York, a scientist of Armenian descent, who earned his BS in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin in 1956, and an M.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City in 1960.

In a 1971 paper, he reported that tumors and normal tissue responded differently to nuclear magnetic resonance ("NMR") in the journal Science. He suggested that these differences could be used to diagnose cancer, though later research would find that not all cancers responded in the way he had predicted. Additionally, some of his initial methods would turn out to be flawed. [1] Nonetheless, in 1974, he patented the design and use of NMR (US Patent 3,789,832 [2]) for detecting cancer. Note that this patent did not describe a method for generating pictures.

After Paul Lauterbur, Peter Mansfield, and others found a way of using NMR to generate images, Damadian used their work to produce the first full magnetic resonance imaging ("MRI") scan of the human body in 1977. In 1978 he formed his own company, FONAR, for the production of MRI scanners, and in 1980, he produced the first commercial one. Damadian's method of generating images proved unsuccesful - the machine, named "Indomitable", failed to sell and FONAR eventually abandoned Damadian's "focused field" approach in favour of Lauterbur and Mansfield's methods. [3]

He later collaborated with Wilson Greatbach, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker, to develop a MRI-compatible pacemaker.

In 2003, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for their discoveries related to MRI. Although Nobel rules allowed for the award to be shared with a third party, Damadian was not given the prize. A disappointed Damadian took out large, expensive advertisements in a number of international newspapers protesting his exclusion from the award. Several MRI experts and university professors were quoted in the ads expressing their disappointment and dismay at the decision. [4] Others point out that while Damadian had hypothesized that NMR relaxation times might be used to detect cancer, he did not develop (nor did he suggest) a way of creating images. Since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for the develop of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Damadian's exclusion makes more sense.

In recording the history of MRI, Mattson and Simon (1996) credit Damadian with describing the concept of whole-body NMR scanning, as well as discovering the NMR tissue relaxation differences that made this feasible. In 2001, the Lemelson-MIT program bestowed its Lifetime Achievement Award on Dr. Damadian as "the man who invented the MRI scanner" [5]. The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia gave its recognition of Damadian's work on MRI with the Bower Award in Business Leadership. He was also named Knights of Vartan 2003 "Man of the Year". He received a National Medal of Technology in 1988 and was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989.

Damadian is a controversial figure in NMR circles, not least for his exuberant behaviour at conferences. [6] He is also highly religious Christian and a young earth creationist.[7] Some creationists [8] and evolutionary biologists [9] have claimed that he was not awarded a Nobel Prize because of this position.

• Nobel Prize controversies

• Curriculum Vitae
• FONAR corporate website
• "Nobel Prizefight"

• James Mattson and Merrill Simon. The Pioneers of NMR and Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: The Story of MRI. Jericho & New York: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1996. ISBN 0961924314.