Allan MacLeod Cormack (February 23, 1924 – May 7, 1998) was a South African American physicist who received his B.Sc. in physics in 1944 from the University of Cape Town and his M.Sc. in crystallography in 1945 from the same institution. He was a research student at Cambridge University from 1947–49. Cormack became a professor at Tufts University in the fall of 1957. Although he was mainly working on particle physics, Cormacks side interest in x-ray technology led him to develop the theoretical underpinnings of CT scanning. His results were subsequently published in two papers in the Journal of Applied Physics in 1963 and 1964. These papers generated little interest until Hounsfield built the first CT scanner in 1971, taking Cormacks theoretical calculations into a real application. For their independent efforts, Cormack and Hounsfield shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Cormack was unusual in the field of Nobel laureates because he never earned a doctorate degree in medicine or any other field of science.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Feb 2014 03:51:50 +0000
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