Recently the inventor of the MRI passed away. Dr. Raymond Damadian an American physician grew up in in Forest Hills Gardens on Shorthill Road by “The Secret Steps”. In later years he moved out to Long Island.
During his younger years, his interests included playing in the Junior Tennis Davis Cup Series and learning how to play the violin while at Juillard. However what provoked his interest in the medical field may have been his grandmother who painfully died of breast cancer when he was only 10 years old.
Without going into too much technical detail Damadian learned how tumors can be detected by Nuclear Magnetics Fields. Thus in the early 1970’s he came up with an Apparatus called Magnetic Resource Imaging aka MRI. Even though he wasn’t awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, much to his disappointment, he was able to manufacture his invention.
Over time which included many disputes defending his invention Damadian stated: “If people want to reconsider history apart from the facts, there’s not much that I can do about that.” Dr. Damadian, Left, with his 1977-model scanner and his
colleagues Lawrence Minkoff, center, the subject of its first
scan, and Michael Goldsmith