Peter Mansfield
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2006
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the Nobel prize-winning physicist Sir Peter Mansfield. His work in magnetic resonance imaging more than 30 years ago led to the development of the MRI scanner, which has revolutionised the diagnosis of illness today.
He was born in London before the Second World War and as a boy, remembers the first Doodlebug attack on the capital. Watching the flying bombs gave him an interest in rocket propulsion which was to lead to a life-long career in science. The son of a gas-fitter, he left school without O levels at the age of 15. His school careers' officer had laughed at his ambition to be a scientist and fixed him up with a job as a printer. He put himself through night school, and went on to graduate with a first class degree in physics.
The first MRI scan was performed using him as the guinea-pig and with next-of-kin on hand because of the risks involved. His pioneering research was carried out at the University of Nottingham where he became Emeritus Professor of Physics. In 2003 he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine at the age of 70.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Vltava Suite from Smetana's Má Vast by Bedrich Smetana Book: Family photograph albums Luxury: Helicopter
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 2006, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a physicist. His is a story of persistence, determination and sheer hard work |
| 0:36.9 | resulting in momentous achievement. Just over two years ago he won the Nobel Prize for |
| 0:42.0 | Medicine for his part in the development of the MRI scanner. |
| 0:46.2 | Born and brought up in South London, he's the son of a gasfitter who failed the 11-plus and left |
| 0:51.3 | school at 15, but eventually won a place at university after |
| 0:55.0 | passing his A levels while doing his national service. He went on to take a job |
| 0:59.3 | at Nottingham University where despite tempting offers from America he's more or less remained ever since. |
| 1:05.6 | It was more than 30 years ago that he started work on the project that's brought him international |
| 1:10.8 | fame. |
| 1:11.8 | In the beginning, I wasn't thinking about the hundreds of |
| 1:14.1 | millions of people who might benefit from it he says I was just thinking about how to |
| 1:18.2 | get the damn thing to work. He is Sir Peter Mansfield. |
| 1:21.7 | Peter I've been watching some old film of you on tomorrow's world back in the 70s. |
| 1:27.8 | It was you climbing into the prototype of your MRI scanner, |
| 1:32.0 | because you had to experiment on yourself in those days, didn't you? |
| 1:35.3 | Initially, yes. The very first experiments were done with me climbing in the magnet and producing a by today's standards very crude scan of my abdomen. |
| 1:47.8 | And also quite frightening presumably because you didn't know what might happen to you inside this thing did you? |
| 1:54.0 | Well I was fairly convinced that there wasn't going to be a problem despite the fact that |
| 1:59.8 | I'd had a letter from an American colleague saying that the general setup that we had might |
| 2:07.0 | be dangerous because he'd done some calculations to suggest that we could end up in difficulties. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.