A Gentleman´s Crazy Idea

In London, in fall 1971, a radiologist and an engineer found themselves jumping up and down for joy – as one of them later recalled – “like football players who had just scored a winning goal.” In their hands, the two researchers were holding a completely new type of X-ray image – known as a tomogram – that depicted a human brain in unprecedented quality. Indeed, looking at the image, the radiologist, James Ambrose, could see his 41-year-old patient’s brain “in a great deal more detail than we’d expected” and could clearly make out the cortex, the spaces filled with cerebrospinal fluid, and even the white matter.