The true story of the doctor who invented the MRI: “A fascinating account of how a significant medical development came about” (The New York Times). Dr. Raymond Damadian was plagued with a mysterious and persistent stomach pain, yet physicians assured him that they could find nothing wrong. To find the answer to his ailment, Damadian would spend the ensuing twelve years building a machine that would change medicine. Nuclear magnetic resonance scanning, now called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), was a revolution: a safe means to determine the makeup of every cell in the human body, distinguishing healthy cells from sick. Although Damadian’s ideas were met with skepticism and outright opposition from the medical community, this machine would go on to save the lives of millions by diagnosing disease while effective treatment was still possible. In short, it was a medical miracle. The story of Damadian’s quest—battling skeptical peers, money troubles, and more with an intensity approaching obsession—is one of the great legends of medical research. Sonny Kleinfield, acclaimed reporter and author, captures Damadian’s remarkable triumph against the odds with compassion and a keen eye. A Machine Called Indomitable is scientific storytelling at its finest.

A study of science and technology practices that shows how even emergent aspects of research and development remain entangled with established hierarchies. In the last four decades, during which magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has emerged as a cutting-edge medical technology and a cultural icon, technoscientific imaginaries and practices have undergone a profound change across the globe. Shifting transnational geography of tecchnoscientific innovations is making commonly deployed Euro/West-centric divides such as west versus non-west or “innovating north” versus “non-innovating south” increasingly untenable—the world is indeed becoming flatter. Nevertheless, such dualist divides, which are intimately tied to other dualist categories that have been used to describe scientific knowledge and practice, continue to undergird analyses and imaginaries of transnational technoscience. Imperial Technoscience puts into broad relief the ambivalent and contradictory folding of Euro/west-centrism with emergent features of technoscience. It argues, Euro/West-centric historicism, and resulting over-determinations, not only hide the vibrant, albeit hierarchical, transnational histories of technoscience, but also tell us little about shifting geography of technoscientific innovations. The book utilizes a deconstructive-empirical approach to explore “entangled” histories of MRI across disciplines (physics, chemistry, medicine, etc.), institutions (university, hospitals, industry, etc.), and nations (United States, Britain, and India). Entangled histories of MRI, it shows, better explain emergence and consolidation of particular technoscientific trajectories and shifts in transnational geography of science and technology (e.g. centers and peripheries).

The story behind the invention of the most important medical diagnostic tool since the X-ray. On September 2, 1971, the chemist Paul Lauterbur had an idea that would change the practice of medical research. Considering recent research findings about the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signals to detect tumors in tissue samples, Lauterbur realized that the information from NMR signals could be recovered in the form of images—and thus obtained noninvasively from a living subject. It was an unexpected epiphany: he was eating a hamburger at the time. Lauterbur rushed out to buy a notebook in which to work out his idea; he completed his notes a few days later. He had discovered the basic method used in all MRI scanners around the world, and for this discovery he would share the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2003. This book, by Lauterbur's wife and scientific partner, M. Joan Dawson, is the story of Paul Lauterbur's discovery and the subsequent development of the most important medical diagnostic tool since the X-ray. With MRI, Lauterbur had discovered an entirely new principle of imaging. Dawson explains the science behind the discovery and describes Lauterbur's development of the idea, his steadfastness in the face of widespread skepticism and criticism, and related work by other scientists including Peter Mansfield (Lauterbur's Nobel co-recipient), and Raymond Damadian (who famously feuded with Lauterbur over credit for the ideas behind MRI). She offers not only the story of one man's passion for his work but also a case study of how science is actually done: a flash of insight followed by years of painstaking work.

We often think of scientists as dispassionate and detached, nobly laboring without any expectation of reward. But scientific research is much more complicated and messy than this ideal, and scientists can be torn by jealousy, impelled by a need for recognition, and subject to human vulnerability and fallibility. In Prize Fight , Emeritus Chair at SUNY School of Medicine Morton Meyers pulls back the curtain to reveal the dark side of scientific discovery. From allegations of stolen authorship to fabricated results and elaborate hoaxes, he shows us how too often brilliant minds are reduced to petty jealousies and promising careers cut short by disputes over authorship or fudged data. Prize Fight is a dramatic look at some of the most notable discoveries in science in recent years, from the discovery of insulin, which led to decades of infighting and even violence, to why the 2003 Nobel Prize in Medicine exposed how often scientific objectivity is imperiled.

Traces the history of western medicine through the lives of its major contributors, profiling such well-known figures as Hippocrates and Louis Pasteur, as well as lesser-known scientists including Elle Metchnikoff and Samuel Hahnemann.

A fascinating account of the dramatic history of a revolutionary medical breakthrough that began with the detection of magnetic resonance in molecular beams by Isidor Rabi.

The remarkable epic of an invention that revolutionized medicine Dr. Raymond Damadian was plagued with a mysterious and persistent stomach pain, yet physicians assured him that they could find nothing wrong. To find the answer to his ailment, Damadian would spend the ensuing twelve years building a machine that would change medicine. Nuclear magnetic resonance scanning, now called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), was a revolution: a safe means to determine the makeup of every cell in the human body, distinguishing healthy cells from sick. Although Damadian's ideas were met with skepticism and outright opposition from the medical community, this machine would go on to save the lives of millions by diagnosing disease while effective treatment was still possible. In short, it was a medical miracle. The story of Damadian's quest-battling skeptical peers, money troubles, and more with an intensity approaching obsession-is one of the great legends of medical research. Sonny Kleinfield, acclaimed reporter and author, captures Damadian's remarkable triumph against the odds with compassion and a keen eye. A Machine Called Indomitable is scientific storytelling at its finest. "A fascinating account of how a significant medical development came about." - The New York Times "The backbiting, the infighting, the nastiness, the greed, the need for money, and the genius: A Machine Called Indomitable has it all. It's the way science really works." -Frank Field, senior science editor, CBS-TV "Kleinfield has a fine reporter's eye and ear for detail." - Kirkus Reviews "The story, cogently told by Kleinfield, portrays the interplay of strong personalities which both spurred and hampered a major technological advance of this decade." - Library Journal "Lively." - Publishers Weekly Sonny Kleinfield is a reporter for the New York Times and the author of eight books. He has contributed articles to the Atlantic , Harper's Magazine , Esquire , and Rolling Stone , and was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal before joining the Times . He shared in a Pulitzer Prize for a Times series on race in America, and has received a number of other accolades, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the Meyer Berger Award, an American Society of Newspaper Editors Award, and the Gerald Loeb Award. A native of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, he is a graduate of New York University and lives in New York City.