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Noise annoys Cabbing fever Judgement day Weather report Moves to relax sonar Ig Nobel prizes give Everglades project Japan throws the rules spark marine study of taxi-drivers flounders after judge switch for high-res protest the thumbs up is ousted climate model p549 p550 p551 p552 Magnetic pioneers net Nobel for putting medicine in the picture

Helen Pearson, For allowing doctors to peer into previously impenetrable S. TAN/AP

S.PERLMAN/AP parts of the human body, two have scooped the 2003 in or Medicine. of the University of Illinois in Urbana and of the University of , UK, share the prize for their contribution to the develop- ment of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Before the advent of MRI in the 1970s, doctors struggled Winners: Paul Lauterbur (left) with the first magnetic resonance image and Peter Mansfield by the machine it inspired. to examine organs and soft tissues in people using X-rays. Today, MRI that the technique could be used to image live and clinicians to take snapshots of fast- clinicians and medical researchers alike can animals, rather than killing them to remove moving events, such as the beating of the readily view details of the internal structure and study their tissues.“I thought there must heart. It has also been vital in the develop- of patients’entire bodies. be another way,”he says. ment of brain scanning by functional MRI, Lauterbur and Mansfield kick-started this But at the time,it was difficult to envisage in which mental activity can be tracked by revolution in medical imaging by tweaking a the technique evolving to give us the sophis- monitoring changes in blood flow.“It’s been technique called nuclear magnetic resonance ticated medical images that are now routine critical,”says Paul Matthews, director of the (NMR), primarily used for investigating — nearly 60 million of Centre for Functional MRI molecular structures. When placed in a them were taken in 2002. of the Brain at the Univers- magnetic field, the nuclei of certain atoms, “No one could imagine ity of Oxford,UK. including hydrogen, line up. Subjected to a doing this to people,” A Nobel for MRI has blast of radio waves, they absorb this radia- explains radiologist Paul been long anticipated but, tion and emit it again as an NMR signal — Bottomley of Johns Hop- because its development from which the structure of the molecules in kins University in Balti- has involved many steps, which the atoms sit can be deciphered. more,Maryland. deciding who to reward While working at the State University of It was Mansfield who,in won’t have been easy. “It’s New York at Stony Brook,Lauterbur came up a series of papers, provided been a hot potato for the with the idea of using a graded magnetic field imaginative leaps to turn Nobel prize committee,” that increased in strength from one side of MRI into a useful clinical suggests John Griffiths of St an object to the other to create a two-dimen- tool. “His talent is tenacity George’s Hospital Medical sional image of the object’s internal struc- and coming up with good MRI in action: a brain tumour School, London, who uses ture. This is based on the idea that nuclei ideas,”says Bottomley. (green) is marked for surgery. MRI to diagnose and study absorb and emit radio waves at different The first advance made cancer — one of its most frequencies, depending on the strength of by Mansfield was to show that it is possible to important clinical applications. MIT AI LAB/SURGICAL PLANNING LAB/BRIGHAM & WOMEN’S HOSP./SPL WOMEN’S PLANNING LAB/BRIGHAM & AI LAB/SURGICAL MIT the magnetic field in which they are held. selectively image a particular two-dimensional In the end, the Nobel committee seems In a seminal paper, Lauterbur produced slice of an object held in a graded magnetic to have awarded the prize specifically for the crude images of two glass capillaries filled field by delivering the blast of radio waves at initial developments involving the use of with water (P. C. Lauterbur 242, a particular frequency. Second, he developed graded magnetic fields. But experts say that 190–191; 1973).His manuscript was initially techniques to manipulate the applied this does not preclude recognition of other rejected by Nature, but his protests proved magnetic fields and algorithms to interpret the contributors to MRI in the future. “It successful.“I congratulate you on eventually resulting cacophony of radio signals that leaves the way open,” says Stephen Keevil, giving in to my anguish,”he told Nature this enabled images to be pieced together in just a magnetic resonance at Guy’s week,hours after the prize was announced. a matter of seconds. Hospital,London. I From the beginning, Lauterbur believed Mansfield’s work has allowed researchers ± www.nobel.se

NATURE | VOL 425 | 9 OCTOBER 2003 | www.nature.com/nature © 2003 Nature Publishing Group 547