2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Paul C. Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 6 October 2003.

The citation

The citation reads: "for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Paul C. Lauterbur was born in 1929 in Sidney, the United States, and is affiliated with the University of Illinois, Urbana. Sir Peter Mansfield was born in 1933 in London, United Kingdom, and is affiliated with the University of Nottingham, School of Physics and Astronomy, Nottingham.

Why it matters

Their discoveries led to magnetic resonance imaging, the MRI scanner now found in hospitals around the world. Mansfield did his work at the University of Nottingham.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.