Video: Lady Jean Mansfield and other relatives and colleagues remember Sir Peter.
He was the Nottingham scientist who invented the MRI scanner, saving the lives of countless cancer patients and others across the world by transforming medical history.
But Sir Peter Mansfield, who died earlier this year, was an “honest and modest” man who remains a hero to doctors and academics, but tended not to seek wider limelight.
A special service honouring his memory on Friday (December 8) gave rare hints at what privately drove him to discoveries which led to a knighthood and Nobel Prize.
Around 200 guests at the University of Nottingham event heard stories of Peter Mansfield the husband, friend, father and grandfather – painting a picture of a brilliant man with a very human side.
His widow, Lady Jean Mansfield, was among the speakers at the Great Hall inside the university’s Trent Building. She said Sir Peter could be fair – but firm – with students, setting them high standards.
“I used to say to him ‘why do you do it?’, and he said ‘because I want the best for them’,
“‘If they have the best, if they can leave here with best degree, then they are going to make it,'”
She added: “We miss him dearly, he was my rock. All the things I was afraid of, I’ve had to face without him.
“But he was a kind, gentle man, a very, very modest man.”
Sir Peter made the famous breakthrough at the University of Nottingham in 1977, which led to MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging, being used in hospitals around the world.
He died on February 8 aged 83. Before his funeral hundreds of students and academics lined roads around the University of Nottingham campus to see the cortege pass by.
The route included buildings where much of the original research leading to the discovery took place, and the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, which continues world-leading research in the field.
MRI has many uses but is particularly well-known for helping to spot and diagnose cancer and other illnesses more quickly.
Sir Peter volunteered to be the first person to have their entire body scanned. It was at first feared the procedure, while effective at scanning, may cause a heart attack.
But he survived with no ill-effects and the technology is now in hospitals worldwide having changed medical science.
His eldest daughter, Sarah Mansfield, added after the ceremony: “He was just such a lovely person. He had such a fabulous personality, what else can I say? He was just perfect and we miss him terribly.”
Professor Peter Morris, Sir Mansfield’s PhD student, who helped with key parts of the research which led to the discovery and went on to help develop MRI further, said: “The legacy of his work is phenomenal, we have in excess of 100 million MRI scans conducted each year – so that’s 100 million people whose lives are positively effected by this invention.”
