Allan MacLeod Cormack
23 February 1924 – 7 May 1998
Allan MacLeod Cormack was a South African-born American physicist who worked out the mathematical basis for reconstructing images of the body from X-ray measurements taken at many angles. His theoretical papers of the early 1960s underpinned computed tomography, and he shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Godfrey Hounsfield.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Allan MacLeod Cormack.
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- Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) Overlapped 74 years →
- Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002) Overlapped 74 years →
- Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) Overlapped 74 years →
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Life events
Born to Scottish parents who had emigrated to South Africa.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHe completed a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's degree in crystallography.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWorked at the Cavendish Laboratory on nuclear physics before returning to South Africa.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThe couple met while he was studying at Cambridge.
Supervising the use of radioactive isotopes led him to the problem of mapping absorption inside the body.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHe spent the rest of his career in the physics department at Tufts and became a US citizen in 1966.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgTwo papers in the Journal of Applied Physics set out how internal structure could be computed from X-ray transmission data.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgShared with Godfrey Hounsfield for the development of computer assisted tomography.
Source: en.wikipedia.org