Raymond V. Damadian
Encyclopedia
Raymond Vahan Damadian (born March 16, 1936, NY USA) is an Armenian
America
n medical practitioner and inventor of the first MR (Magnetic Resonance) Scanning Machine. His research into sodium and potassium in living cells led him to his first experiments with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) which caused him to first propose the MR body scanner in 1969. Damadian discovered that tumor
s and normal tissue can be distinguished in vivo by nuclear magnetic resonance
(NMR) because of their relaxation times. Damadian was the first to perform a full body scan of a human being in 1977 to diagnose cancer
. Damadian invented an apparatus and method to use NMR safely and accurately to scan the human body, a method now well known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Damadian received several prizes:
In 2001, the Lemelson-MIT Prize
Program bestowed its $100,000 Lifetime Achievement Award on Damadian as "the man who invented the MRI scanner." He went on to collaborate with Wilson Greatbach, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker, to develop an MRI-compatible pacemaker. 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.
in 1956, and an M.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine
in New York City
in 1960. He studied the violin
at Juilliard for 8 years.
, SUNY Downstate Medical Center professor Damadian reported that tumor
s and normal tissue can be distinguished in vivo by nuclear magnetic resonance
("NMR"). He suggested that these differences could be used to diagnose cancer
, though later research would find that these differences, while real, are too variable for diagnostic purposes. Damadian's initial methods were flawed for practical use, relying on a point-by-point scan of the entire body and using relaxation rates, which turned out to not be an effective indicator of cancerous tissue. Nonetheless, in 1974, he received the first patent in the field of MRI when he patented the concept of NMR for detecting cancer after filing an application in 1972. As the National Science Foundation
notes, "The patent included the idea of using NMR to 'scan' the human body to locate cancerous tissue." However, it did not describe a method for generating pictures from such a scan or precisely how such a scan might be done.
In the 1950s, Herman Carr
reported creating a one-dimensional MR image. Prompted by Damadian's report on the potential medical uses of NMR, Paul Lauterbur
expanded on Carr's technique and developed a way to generate the first MRI images, in 2D and 3D, using gradients. Peter Mansfield
from the University of Nottingham
then developed a mathematical technique that would allow scans to take seconds rather than hours and produce clearer images than Lauterbur had. While Lauterbur and Mansfield focused on animals and human limbs, Damadian built the first full-body MRI machine and produced the first full magnetic resonance imaging
("MRI") scan of the human body, albeit using a "focused field" technique that differs considerably from modern imaging.
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.
It took almost five hours to produce one image. The images were, by modern standards, rudimentary. Dr. Raymond Damadian, a physician and scientist, along with colleagues Dr. Larry Minkoff and Dr. Michael Goldsmith, labored tirelessly for seven long years to reach this point. They named their original machine "Indomitable" to capture the spirit of their struggle to do what many said could not be done... but no systems would ever use Damadian's method however. His technique of imaging was never made a practically usable method and has never been used in what is considered MR imaging as we know it today. His 1972 patent never described an imaging device but a method of "detecting" cancer... more of a Geiger counter approach for cancer 'detection'.
Also, his patent followed on the heels of rumors already floating throughout the scientific community of Lauterbur's proposed idea of using NMR 'in vivo' (still in the human body... an imaging device) rather than Damadian's idea to use NMR as a 'in vitro' (or excised tissue) technique for differentiating cancerous from normal tissue. Damadian has continually argued that was what he meant but the truth is in the details. Damadian may have inspired Lauterbur's idea but Damadian did NOT invent MRI and careful review of Damadian's patent does not support his arguments (even the title of the patent states DETECTING); so, his 'FIRST body MRI' on July 3, 1977 is not actually the first MRI. It was his first attempt at a technique which was un-usable and ultimately abandoned even by him.
Nonetheless his machine, is now in the Smithsonian Institution. As late as 1982, there were but a handful of MRI scanners in the entire United States. Today there are thousands. It is possible to image in seconds what used to take hours but not using any of Damadian's imaging methods of "field focused nuclear magnetic resonance".
on patents held by Damadian. They settled with many large companies, but a case
against General Electric
went to the Federal Circuit
, which upheld a $129 million ruling against GE for violation of Damadian's patents. Damadian says that the judgment money has all been put back into FONAR for research and development purposes; he is the company's largest shareholder, with 8% of stock worth $6.5 million. Despite owning only 8% of the stock, however, he maintains near 100% control of the company through a separate class of shares (Class C) that only Damadian controls (2007 shareholder proxy statement).
Damadian later collaborated with Wilson Greatbatch
, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker
, to develop an MRI-compatible pacemaker. He also invented a stand-up MRI system and has 15 MRI scanning centers across the United States. There are also a number of independent MRI centers that use this technology both in the U.S. and around the world.
The company conceived and built the world's first Upright Multi-Positional MRI, which was recognized as The Invention of the Year in 2007 by the Intellectual Properties Owners Association Education Foundation.
in 1988 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame
in 1989. His original MRI full-body scanner was given to the Smithsonian Institution
in the 1980s and is now on loan and on display at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Ohio.
In 2001, the Lemelson-MIT Prize
Program bestowed its $100,000 Lifetime Achievement Award on Damadian as "the man who invented the MRI scanner." 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 the Knights of Vartan 2003 "Man of the Year." In September 2003, he was honored with the Innovation Award in Bioscience from The Economist
.
was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for their discoveries related to MRI. Although Nobel rules allow for the award to be shared by up to three recipients, Damadian was not given the prize.
The controversy over who played what part in the development of the MRI had gone on for years prior to the Nobel announcement, and many in the scientific community felt that the Nobel had not been awarded for the MRI for so long due to debate over Damadian's role in its development. Damadian said that credit should go to "me, and then Lauterbur," and Lauterbur felt that only he should get credit. As an example of the debate, in 1997 the National Academy of Sciences
commissioned a timeline of MRI milestones, and four of the 12 in an initial draft were attributed to Damadian. At the final publication in 2001, longer than any other publication in the series had ever been taken, none of the milestones were attributed to Damadian. The text said that Damadian's methods had "not proved clinically reliable in detecting or diagnosing cancer
." After Damadian's lawyer
s sent the NAS a threatening letter, the text on the NAS website was revised, but still not to Damadian's satisfaction. Damadian said in 2002, "If I had not been born, would MRI have existed? I don't think so. If Lauterbur had not been born? I would have gotten there. Eventually."
The New York Times wrote:
After the announcement of Lauterbur and Mansfield's Nobels, between October and November 2003, an ad hoc group called "The Friends of Raymond Damadian" took out full-page advertisements in The New York Times
twice, The Washington Post
, The Los Angeles Times and one of the largest newspapers in Sweden
, Dagens Nyheter
protesting his exclusion with the headline "The Shameful Wrong That Must Be Righted" in an attempt to get the Nobel Committee to change its mind and grant him a share of the Prize, apparently unaware that the decision to award a Nobel Prize is final and with no possibility for appeal. Damadian suggested that Lauterbur and Mansfield should have rejected the Nobel Prize unless Damadian was given joint recognition. Supporting Damadian were various MRI experts including John Throck Watson, Eugene Feigelson, V. Adrian Parsegian, Dr. David Stark and James Mattson. New York Times columnist Horace Freeland Judson
criticised this behavior, noting that there is "no Nobel Prize for whining" and that many deserving candidates who may have had better claims than Damadian, such as Lise Meitner
, Oswald Avery
and Jocelyn Bell, had been previously denied a share of the Nobel.
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) the current way of creating images. Since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for the development of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Damadian's exclusion makes more sense.
Some felt that research scientists sided with Lauterbur because he was one of their own, while Damadian was a physician who had profited greatly from his early patents. Charles Springer, an expert in MRI at Oregon Health and Science University, said that if a poll was taken of the academic community, most would agree with the Nobel Committee
's conclusions. Damadian's contributions were consistently recognized more outside of the academic community than within it. Others said that Damadian had not acted in the manner of a scientist on many occasions, which alienated the academic community, including when he held a 1977 press conference to announce that his full-body scanner could detect cancer anywhere in the body. While the New York Times articles cites that in modern uses, MRI is not usually used for diagnosis but for location of tumors already diagnosed, this is a gross oversimplification of the utility of the technique. Indeed, today MRI makes diagnoses not possible by any other means (for example, within the field of neuroradiology).
Some consider Damadian to be a controversial figure in academic circles, not least for his exuberant behavior at conferences. He is also fundamentalist Christian and a young earth creationist
and a member of the 'Technical Advisory Board' of the Institute for Creation Research
. Philosopher Michael Ruse
writing for the Metanexus Institute suggested that Damadian might have been denied a Nobel prize because of his creationist views, saying:
Damadian himself said, "Before this happened, nobody ever said to me 'They will not give you the Nobel Prize for Medicine because you are a creation scientist.'... If people were actively campaigning against me because of that, I never knew it."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
n medical practitioner and inventor of the first MR (Magnetic Resonance) Scanning Machine. His research into sodium and potassium in living cells led him to his first experiments with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) which caused him to first propose the MR body scanner in 1969. Damadian discovered that tumor
Tumor
A tumor or tumour is commonly used as a synonym for a neoplasm that appears enlarged in size. Tumor is not synonymous with cancer...
s and normal tissue can be distinguished in vivo by nuclear magnetic resonance
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Nuclear magnetic resonance is a physical phenomenon in which magnetic nuclei in a magnetic field absorb and re-emit electromagnetic radiation...
(NMR) because of their relaxation times. Damadian was the first to perform a full body scan of a human being in 1977 to diagnose cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
. Damadian invented an apparatus and method to use NMR safely and accurately to scan the human body, a method now well known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Damadian received several prizes:
In 2001, the Lemelson-MIT Prize
Lemelson-MIT Prize
The Lemelson Foundation awards several prizes yearly to inventors in United States. The largest is the Lemelson-MIT Prize which was endowed in 1994 by Jerome H. Lemelson, and is administered through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
Program bestowed its $100,000 Lifetime Achievement Award on Damadian as "the man who invented the MRI scanner." He went on to collaborate with Wilson Greatbach, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker, to develop an MRI-compatible pacemaker. 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.
Early life
Damadian was born in New York, to an Armenian family. He earned his bachelors degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin–MadisonUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
in 1956, and an M.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a graduate school of Yeshiva University. It is a not-for-profit, private, nonsectarian medical school located on the Jack and Pearl Resnick Campus in the Morris Park neighborhood of the borough of the Bronx of New York City...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1960. He studied the violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
at Juilliard for 8 years.
Work on MRI
In a 1971 paper in the journal ScienceScience (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
, SUNY Downstate Medical Center professor Damadian reported that tumor
Tumor
A tumor or tumour is commonly used as a synonym for a neoplasm that appears enlarged in size. Tumor is not synonymous with cancer...
s and normal tissue can be distinguished in vivo by nuclear magnetic resonance
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Nuclear magnetic resonance is a physical phenomenon in which magnetic nuclei in a magnetic field absorb and re-emit electromagnetic radiation...
("NMR"). He suggested that these differences could be used to diagnose cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
, though later research would find that these differences, while real, are too variable for diagnostic purposes. Damadian's initial methods were flawed for practical use, relying on a point-by-point scan of the entire body and using relaxation rates, which turned out to not be an effective indicator of cancerous tissue. Nonetheless, in 1974, he received the first patent in the field of MRI when he patented the concept of NMR for detecting cancer after filing an application in 1972. As the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
notes, "The patent included the idea of using NMR to 'scan' the human body to locate cancerous tissue." However, it did not describe a method for generating pictures from such a scan or precisely how such a scan might be done.
In the 1950s, Herman Carr
Herman Carr
Herman Y. Carr was an American physicist and pioneer of magnetic resonance imaging.Carr was born in Alliance, Ohio. He received his BS, MS and PHD from Harvard University, where he studied under Edward Purcell. He later moved to Rutgers University, where he was professor. He retired in 1987.In...
reported creating a one-dimensional MR image. Prompted by Damadian's report on the potential medical uses of NMR, Paul Lauterbur
Paul Lauterbur
Paul Christian Lauterbur was an American chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003 with Peter Mansfield for his work which made the development of magnetic resonance imaging possible.Dr...
expanded on Carr's technique and developed a way to generate the first MRI images, in 2D and 3D, using gradients. Peter Mansfield
Peter Mansfield
Sir Peter Mansfield, FRS, , is a British physicist who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging . The Nobel Prize was shared with Paul Lauterbur, who also contributed to the development of MRI...
from the University of Nottingham
University of Nottingham
The University of Nottingham is a public research university based in Nottingham, United Kingdom, with further campuses in Ningbo, China and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia...
then developed a mathematical technique that would allow scans to take seconds rather than hours and produce clearer images than Lauterbur had. While Lauterbur and Mansfield focused on animals and human limbs, Damadian built the first full-body MRI machine and produced the first full magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging , nuclear magnetic resonance imaging , or magnetic resonance tomography is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to visualize detailed internal structures...
("MRI") scan of the human body, albeit using a "focused field" technique that differs considerably from modern imaging.
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.
First Human MRI Body Scan
On July 3, 1977, the first MRI body exam was performed on a human being (the first human scan was performed by Sir Peter Mansfield's team in Nottingham a year earlier - but this was a cross-sectional image through a finger rather than a body scan).It took almost five hours to produce one image. The images were, by modern standards, rudimentary. Dr. Raymond Damadian, a physician and scientist, along with colleagues Dr. Larry Minkoff and Dr. Michael Goldsmith, labored tirelessly for seven long years to reach this point. They named their original machine "Indomitable" to capture the spirit of their struggle to do what many said could not be done... but no systems would ever use Damadian's method however. His technique of imaging was never made a practically usable method and has never been used in what is considered MR imaging as we know it today. His 1972 patent never described an imaging device but a method of "detecting" cancer... more of a Geiger counter approach for cancer 'detection'.
Also, his patent followed on the heels of rumors already floating throughout the scientific community of Lauterbur's proposed idea of using NMR 'in vivo' (still in the human body... an imaging device) rather than Damadian's idea to use NMR as a 'in vitro' (or excised tissue) technique for differentiating cancerous from normal tissue. Damadian has continually argued that was what he meant but the truth is in the details. Damadian may have inspired Lauterbur's idea but Damadian did NOT invent MRI and careful review of Damadian's patent does not support his arguments (even the title of the patent states DETECTING); so, his 'FIRST body MRI' on July 3, 1977 is not actually the first MRI. It was his first attempt at a technique which was un-usable and ultimately abandoned even by him.
Nonetheless his machine, is now in the Smithsonian Institution. As late as 1982, there were but a handful of MRI scanners in the entire United States. Today there are thousands. It is possible to image in seconds what used to take hours but not using any of Damadian's imaging methods of "field focused nuclear magnetic resonance".
Fonar Corporation
In 1978, Damadian formed his own company, FONAR (which stood for "field focused nuclear magnetic resonance"), for the production of MRI scanners, and in 1980, he produced the first commercial one. Damadian's "focused field" technology proved less effective than Lauterbur's gradient approach. His scanner, named "Indomitable," failed to sell. FONAR eventually abandoned Damadian's technique in favour of the methods adopted by Lauterbur and Mansfield. Damadian and FONAR aggressively enforced the royaltiesRoyalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
on patents held by Damadian. They settled with many large companies, but a case
Fonar v. General Electric
Fonar v. General Electric was a case decided in 1997 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concerning source code and the disclosure requirement for software patents.-Factual background:...
against General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
went to the Federal Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
-Vacancies and pending nominations:-List of former judges:-Chief judges:Notwithstanding the foregoing, when the court was initially created, Congress had to resolve which chief judge of the predecessor courts would become the first chief judge...
, which upheld a $129 million ruling against GE for violation of Damadian's patents. Damadian says that the judgment money has all been put back into FONAR for research and development purposes; he is the company's largest shareholder, with 8% of stock worth $6.5 million. Despite owning only 8% of the stock, however, he maintains near 100% control of the company through a separate class of shares (Class C) that only Damadian controls (2007 shareholder proxy statement).
Damadian later collaborated with Wilson Greatbatch
Wilson Greatbatch
Wilson Greatbatch was an American engineer and inventor whois most widely known as the inventor of the implantable cardiac pacemaker...
, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker
Artificial pacemaker
A pacemaker is a medical device that uses electrical impulses, delivered by electrodes contacting the heart muscles, to regulate the beating of the heart...
, to develop an MRI-compatible pacemaker. He also invented a stand-up MRI system and has 15 MRI scanning centers across the United States. There are also a number of independent MRI centers that use this technology both in the U.S. and around the world.
The company conceived and built the world's first Upright Multi-Positional MRI, which was recognized as The Invention of the Year in 2007 by the Intellectual Properties Owners Association Education Foundation.
Awards and honors
Damadian received a National Medal of TechnologyNational Medal of Technology
The National Medal of Technology and Innovation is an honor granted by the President of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development of new and important technology...
in 1988 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame
National Inventors Hall of Fame
The National Inventors Hall of Fame is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recognizing, honoring and encouraging invention and creativity through the administration of its programs. The Hall of Fame honors the men and women responsible for the great technological advances that make human,...
in 1989. His original MRI full-body scanner was given to the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
in the 1980s and is now on loan and on display at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Ohio.
In 2001, the Lemelson-MIT Prize
Lemelson-MIT Prize
The Lemelson Foundation awards several prizes yearly to inventors in United States. The largest is the Lemelson-MIT Prize which was endowed in 1994 by Jerome H. Lemelson, and is administered through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
Program bestowed its $100,000 Lifetime Achievement Award on Damadian as "the man who invented the MRI scanner." The Franklin Institute
Franklin Institute
The Franklin Institute is a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the oldest centers of science education and development in the United States, dating to 1824. The Institute also houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.-History:On February 5, 1824, Samuel Vaughn Merrick and...
in Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
gave its recognition of Damadian's work on MRI with the Bower Award in Business Leadership. He was also named the Knights of Vartan 2003 "Man of the Year." In September 2003, he was honored with the Innovation Award in Bioscience from The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
.
Nobel Prize controversy
In 2003, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for their discoveries related to MRI. Although Nobel rules allow for the award to be shared by up to three recipients, Damadian was not given the prize.
The controversy over who played what part in the development of the MRI had gone on for years prior to the Nobel announcement, and many in the scientific community felt that the Nobel had not been awarded for the MRI for so long due to debate over Damadian's role in its development. Damadian said that credit should go to "me, and then Lauterbur," and Lauterbur felt that only he should get credit. As an example of the debate, in 1997 the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
commissioned a timeline of MRI milestones, and four of the 12 in an initial draft were attributed to Damadian. At the final publication in 2001, longer than any other publication in the series had ever been taken, none of the milestones were attributed to Damadian. The text said that Damadian's methods had "not proved clinically reliable in detecting or diagnosing cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
." After Damadian's lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
s sent the NAS a threatening letter, the text on the NAS website was revised, but still not to Damadian's satisfaction. Damadian said in 2002, "If I had not been born, would MRI have existed? I don't think so. If Lauterbur had not been born? I would have gotten there. Eventually."
The New York Times wrote:
The issue has been the subject of a dispute between Dr. Damadian and Dr. Lauterbur and has been known for years in academic circles, with some fearing that the Nobel committee would steer clear of magnetic resonance imaging altogether because of the Swedes' supposed distaste for controversial discoveries. Dr. Lauterbur, 74, is not in good health, and the committee may have decided that its prize, which cannot be given posthumously, needed to be awarded for the discovery now or never.".
After the announcement of Lauterbur and Mansfield's Nobels, between October and November 2003, an ad hoc group called "The Friends of Raymond Damadian" took out full-page advertisements in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
twice, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, The Los Angeles Times and one of the largest newspapers in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Dagens Nyheter
Dagens Nyheter
is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It has the largest circulation of Swedish morning newspapers, followed by Göteborgs-Posten and Svenska Dagbladet, and is the only morning newspaper that is distributed to subscribers across the whole country. In 2009 DN had a circulation of 316,000, reaching 881...
protesting his exclusion with the headline "The Shameful Wrong That Must Be Righted" in an attempt to get the Nobel Committee to change its mind and grant him a share of the Prize, apparently unaware that the decision to award a Nobel Prize is final and with no possibility for appeal. Damadian suggested that Lauterbur and Mansfield should have rejected the Nobel Prize unless Damadian was given joint recognition. Supporting Damadian were various MRI experts including John Throck Watson, Eugene Feigelson, V. Adrian Parsegian, Dr. David Stark and James Mattson. New York Times columnist Horace Freeland Judson
Horace Freeland Judson
Horace Freeland Judson was a historian of molecular biology and the author of several books, including The Eighth Day of Creation, a history of molecular biology, and The Great Betrayal: Fraud In Science, an examination of the deliberate manipulation of scientific data.-Life and career:The Eighth...
criticised this behavior, noting that there is "no Nobel Prize for whining" and that many deserving candidates who may have had better claims than Damadian, such as Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner
Lise Meitner FRS was an Austrian-born, later Swedish, physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics. Meitner was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, an achievement for which her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize...
, Oswald Avery
Oswald Avery
Oswald Theodore Avery ForMemRS was a Canadian-born American physician and medical researcher. The major part of his career was spent at the Rockefeller University Hospital in New York City...
and Jocelyn Bell, had been previously denied a share of the Nobel.
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) the current way of creating images. Since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield for the development of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Damadian's exclusion makes more sense.
Some felt that research scientists sided with Lauterbur because he was one of their own, while Damadian was a physician who had profited greatly from his early patents. Charles Springer, an expert in MRI at Oregon Health and Science University, said that if a poll was taken of the academic community, most would agree with the Nobel Committee
Nobel Committee
A Nobel Committee is the working body responsible for the most of the work involved in selecting Nobel Prize laureates. There are five Nobel Committees, one for each Nobel Prize....
's conclusions. Damadian's contributions were consistently recognized more outside of the academic community than within it. Others said that Damadian had not acted in the manner of a scientist on many occasions, which alienated the academic community, including when he held a 1977 press conference to announce that his full-body scanner could detect cancer anywhere in the body. While the New York Times articles cites that in modern uses, MRI is not usually used for diagnosis but for location of tumors already diagnosed, this is a gross oversimplification of the utility of the technique. Indeed, today MRI makes diagnoses not possible by any other means (for example, within the field of neuroradiology).
Some consider Damadian to be a controversial figure in academic circles, not least for his exuberant behavior at conferences. He is also fundamentalist Christian and a young earth creationist
Young Earth creationism
Young Earth creationism is the religious belief that Heavens, Earth, and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of the Abrahamic God during a relatively short period, sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago...
and a member of the 'Technical Advisory Board' of the Institute for Creation Research
Institute for Creation Research
The Institute for Creation Research is a Christian institution in Dallas, Texas that specializes in education, research, and media promotion of Creation Science and Biblical creationism. The ICR adopts the Bible as an inerrant and literal documentary of scientific and historical fact as well as...
. Philosopher Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse is a philosopher of biology at Florida State University, and is well known for his work on the creationism/evolution controversy and the demarcation problem in science...
writing for the Metanexus Institute suggested that Damadian might have been denied a Nobel prize because of his creationist views, saying:
I cringe at the thought that Raymond Damadian was refused his just honor because of his religious beliefs. Having silly ideas in one field is no good reason to deny merit for great ideas in another field. Apart from the fact that this time the Creation Scientists will think that there is good reason to think that they are the objects of unfair treatment at the hands of the scientific community.| M. Ruse
Damadian himself said, "Before this happened, nobody ever said to me 'They will not give you the Nobel Prize for Medicine because you are a creation scientist.'... If people were actively campaigning against me because of that, I never knew it."
External links
- FONAR corporate website
- "Nobel Prizefight"
- The National Science Foundation's history of MRI. The author cites personal interviews with the principals.
- Cope's 1969 paper on NMR of brain and muscle. Links to early references.
- "Patent Fights Aplenty for M.R.I. Pioneer" New York Times Article on Damadian.
- http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/comcom/feature69.htm