The 2003 Nobel Prize in medicine went to Paul C. Lauterbur and Peter
Mansfield for their development of medical applications for MRI.
Dr. Raymond Damadian also played a key role in the invention; he was
denied a share of the prize because he is a creationist.
Complex inventions build on the work of many, many people. It is often
a subjective judgment call to say which were the most important
inventors. Damadian discovered that that tumors and normal tissues
have different nuclear spin relaxation times; that he deserves much
credit for the MRI is beyond question, and he has received much credit.
That he deserves a Nobel prize is arguable. The prize was awarded
primarily for the imaging aspects of MRI (Nobel Assembly, 2003), to
which Lauterbur and Mansfield contributed more than Damadian.
Lauterbur introduced a method for using NMR for generating images, and
Mansfield enhanced the technique to make it faster and more useful.
There is no indication that Damadian's creationism was a factor in his
not getting the Nobel prize. Personalities play a far greater role
than ideologies in affecting whether someone gets a prize. Damadian's
abrasive personality may well have been enough to make him unpopular.
Or other factors may have been involved. The Nobel committee might
have felt pressure not to split prizes so much. Or they might simply
have screwed up. Blaming his exclusion on creationism is pure
speculation.
The history of the Nobel Prize is full of controversy which has nothing
to do with creationism. Other deserving people passed over for Nobel
Prizes include Dmitri Mendeleev (periodic table of the elements), Edwin
Hubble (expansion of the universe), Samuel Goudsmit and George
Uhlenbeck (spin of the electron), Mohandas K. Gandhi (nonviolent
protest), Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, and James Joyce (literature).
Selman Waksman was the sole winner of the 1952 medicine Nobel prize for
discovering streptomycin, although Albert Schatz did most of the work.
Penzias and Wilson shared the 1978 physics prize for verifying a
prediction of big bang theory, but Ralph Alpher, who was largely
responsible for the theory, was not included. Many people believe
Freeman Dyson should have been included in the 1965 physics Nobel prize
for quantum electrodynamics, and that Otto Hahn's colleagues Lise
Meitner and Fritz Strassmann deserved a share of his 1944 chemistry
prize for fission. Many other examples could be cited (Feldman
2000).
Many people made substantial contributions to MRI but did not win the
Nobel Prize. H. Y. Carr, who pioneered the gradient technique that
Lauterbur used, has at least as good a case for being unjustly passed
over as Damadian does.
Links:
Stracher, Cameron, 2002. Scan and deliver: The duel over who should get
credit for the original MRI. Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal, 14
June 2002. http://opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110001844