Former Stony Brook Professor and Pioneer of the MRI, Paul Lauterbur, Dies at 77

Stony Brook, NY — March 27, 2007 marked a sad chapter in medical history as Paul Lauterbur, who shared the 2003 Nobel Prize for his work in developing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology while a member of Stony Brook University faculty, died at his home in Urbana, IL.

Lauterbur, born May 6, 1929, in Sidney, Ohio, received his B.S. in Chemistry from the Case Institute of Technology, Cleveland, OH and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh. He was a professor in the department of chemistry and Radiology at Stony Brook from 1963 to 1985 where he was among the first scientists to use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy in the study of molecules, solutions and solids.

In the early 1970s, Lauterbur began applying NMR to biological organisms after he watched colleagues use the technology to examine tissue from a cancerous tumor. He first experimented with a clam found by his daughter, Sharyn, in local Stony Brook waters and came to learn that, using a constant magnetic field and varying the strength of a second magnetic field could produce sharper images of the different tissues in an organism.

In 1973, he published in the British scientific journal Nature describing an NMR technique for taking three dimensional pictures of body organs and vessels, without the use of ionized radiation or toxic dyes. This made it possible to construct two or three-dimensional pictures of structures that could not be visualized with other methods, laying the groundwork for MRI technology.

The MRI went on to become one of the most important developments in diagnostic medicine in the 20th Century. For this, Lauterbur shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham in England. He returned to Stony Brook with his Nobel Medal in September 2004 where he delivered a lecture to students and was honored in a campus ceremony attended by many of his early colleagues. His original MRI device remains on display in the University’s Chemistry Building along with a replica of his Nobel Medal.

“Stony Brook is rightfully known as the birthplace of the MRI,” said Stony Brook President Shirley Strum Kenny. “It was an extraordinary step forward in technology, and Paul Lauterbur was a gifted researcher—one who changed lives and changed diagnostic medicine forever. Anyone who has ever had the benefit of an MRI in their treatment can thank Paul Lauterbur. We will miss him.”

Prof. Lauterbur left Stony Brook in 1985 to become the director of the Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Laboratory at the University of Illinois where he died of kidney disease at 77 years of age. He is survived by his wife Joan Dawson, professor at Illinois, a daughter, Elise Lauterbur, and a son and daughter from his first marriage: Daniel Lauterbur and Sharyn Lauterbur-DiGeronimo.