Today, CT is part of everyday medical practice The Briton Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield is considered one of the fathers of computed tomography. At an early stage, he was looking for methods to visualize the inside of the body. Hounsfield came up with the idea that a computer could reconstruct not only characters, but also images using previously acquired measurement data, during his work on pattern recognition in character reading processes in the research laboratories of the record and electronics company EMI. He worked on the development of the first prototype of a computer tomograph from 1967 to 1976, and the first CT was produced in 1971.
For his scientific achievements, Hounsfield was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1979. He had already received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1975. This was followed in 1979 by the Aachen and Munich Prizes for Technology and Applied Natural Sciences. The British Queen knighted him in 1981.