Science, Medicine & Engineering
Landmark
Allan Cormack
1924 – 1998
The mathematics that made the CT scan possible
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the South Africa Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
A Cape Town physicist worked out how to reconstruct the inside of a body from X-rays taken around it. Every CT scanner since runs on it.
Allan MacLeod Cormack was a South African-American physicist, born in Johannesburg in 1924 and educated at the University of Cape Town.
He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Godfrey Hounsfield for the work underlying X-ray computed tomography. He died in 1998.
He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Godfrey Hounsfield for the work underlying X-ray computed tomography. He died in 1998.
- Wikipedia — Allan MacLeod Cormack
- South African History Online — Nobel Prizes and South African laureates
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