FAQs

A short history of MR imaging –
from a European point of view

Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier

Looking back at the main protagonists involved in MR imaging is vital for an understanding of the development of the modality. The topic is interesting, but rather sensitive.

Like any history, the history of MR imaging has no real beginning.

"Everything flows and nothing stays," as Heraklitos pointed out.

One major contribution to the technique can be found in Napoleon's realm. Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier served three years as the secretary of the Institut d'Egypte at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and later became prefect of the Isère département in France. However, the focus of his life was mathematics, and without his Fourier transform we would not be able to create MR images.

Felix Bloch

Edward M Purcell

In 1946, two scientists in the United States, independently of each other, described a physicochemical phenomenon which was based upon the magnetic properties of certain nuclei in the periodic system. This was 'nuclear magnetic resonance', for short 'NMR' [4, 48].

The two scientists, Felix Bloch and Edward M. Purcell, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952.

Purcell was born in Illinois in the United States of America. He worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, and later joined the faculty of Harvard University.

Bloch was born in Zurich in 1905 and taught at the University of Leipzig until 1933; he then emigrated to the United States and was naturalized in 1939. He joined the faculty of Stanford University at Palo Alto in 1934 and became the first director of CERN in Geneva in 1962. In 1983 he died in Zurich. Bloch was a protagonist for the interaction between Europe and the United States. NMR and MRI would not exist without this interaction.

At some stage of their career, many European scientist contemplate emigration to the U.S.A. Some move transatlantic and some even stay for good. Others return. There is hardly any movement in the other direction. The historical reasons were different prior to and after the Second World War. Before the war, plain survival for many depended on emigration, or it was at least guided by political necessity. It was the attraction of the Statue of Liberty which made scientists move westward.

Otto Stern

Isidor I. Rabi

Cornelis J. Gorter

After the war, research facilities in the United States were more attractive than those in Europe because the academic system in the U.S.A. was more flexible than the university structures in Europe – and dollars were plentiful for research and for personal income.

Bloch and Purcell were not the only scientists working in the field. The 1920s had been roaring and inflationary, but also extremely fruitful in science.

In 1924, Wolfgang Pauli suggested the possibility of an intrinsic nuclear spin.

The year after, George Eugene Uhlenbeck and Samuel A. Goudsmit introduced the concept of the spinning electron. Two years later Pauli and Charles Galton Darwin developed a theoretical framework for grafting the concept of electron spin into the new quantum mechanics developed the year before by Edwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg.

Pauli, Uhlenbeck, and Goudsmit went to the United States to work. The British stayed in Britain - at that time.

This development continued in the 1930s. After their initial pacemaking work, in 1933, Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach were able to measure the effect of the nuclear spin by deflection of a beam of hydrogen molecules.

During the early 1930s, Isidor Isaac Rabi's laboratory at Columbia University in New York became a major center for related studies.

Rabi's research was successful, but only the visit by Cornelis Jacobus Gorter from the Netherlands in September 1937 finally showed how to measure the nuclear magnetic moment. Gorter had tried similar experiments and failed. Rabi accepted and realized Gorter's suggestions concerning his experiments, changed them, and was able to observe resonance experimentally. This led to the publication of 'A New Method of Measuring Nuclear Magnetic Moment' in 1938 [50].

Gorter first used the term 'nuclear magnetic resonance' in a publication which appeared in the war-torn Netherlands in 1942, attributing the coining of the phrase to Rabi [20].

EMRF

The European Forum
for Magnetic Resonance Research and Application

Home Page

Mission

Conferences

Publications

Awards and Grants

News and Announcements

Quick Links

FAQs