Pride of Britain — Professor Sir Peter Mansfield

The University of Nottingham’s Professor Sir Peter Mansfield has received a major national honour, winning a Pride of Britain Award. Prime Minister Gordon Brown presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to Sir Peter at
the gala ceremony in London on October 5.

Pride of Britain, hosted by Carol Vorderman, is the biggest event of its kind in the UK and celebrates the achievements of remarkable people who vastly improve the lives of others and Sir Peter was honoured for his
contribution to the invention of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

With much of the pioneering work on MRI carried out at the University by Sir Peter in the mid 1970s, one of the earliest contributions he made to was to invent the method whereby experts can image a slice through a
person. Improvements in MRI images were brought about by a combination of innovation in scanner hardware and the development of more clever techniques, in which The University of Nottingham has played a significant role. Perhaps the best known of these was for the invention of Echo Planar Imaging (EPI) which Sir Peter first proposed in the late 1970s. It is now widely used to look at brain function around the world. Sir Peter shared the Nobel Prize for his part in the development of MRI in 2003.

Vice-Chancellor Professor David Greenaway said: “We are immensely proud of Sir Peter’s achievement. His vision and research have made widespread clinical use of MRI a reality for millions of people around the world: an astonishing accomplishment by an outstanding individual.”

Past winners of the Lifetime Achievement Award include Professor Robert Edwards who helped develop the technology which resulted in the world’s first ‘test-tube’ baby; eminent heart surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub; genetics pioneer Sir Alec Jeffreys and Amnesty International founder Peter Benenson.

Launched 10 years ago by The Daily Mirror, Pride of Britain has seen some of the world’s most distinguished names taking part, including; HRH Prince Charles, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Sir Paul McCartney,
President Bill Clinton and Sir Richard Branson.