Medical Pioneer Dies: Former Stony Brook Professor's Work With MRIs Had Won Him a Share of 2003 Nobe

Mar 29, 07:36 AM

Current Headlines: By Olivia Winslow, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Mar. 29--Paul C. Lauterbur, a former chemistry professor at Stony Brook University whose pioneering research at the university in the 1970s on MRI technology led to his sharing the 2003 Nobel Prize for medicine, died Tuesday at his home in Urbana, Ill., of kidney disease. He was 77.

Colleagues hailed Lauterbur yesterday for his impact on medical diagnostic procedures and his compassion for family, colleagues and students.

"My husband was a very caring individual, always caring for his family and that included his professional family," said his wife, Joan Dawson, a physiology professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Lauterbur had been on the Illinois faculty since 1985. He was at Stony Brook from 1963 to 1985. Francis Bonner, founding chairman of Stony Brook's chemistry department, recalled Lauterbur's thanking the university for taking a "chance on a young guy." But Bonner said Lauterbur "took a risk, too," by coming during a time of turmoil for Stony Brook, which at the time had no permanent president.

Stony Brook President Shirley Strum Kenny said in a statement, "Anyone who has ever had the benefit of an MRI in their treatment can thank Paul Lauterbur. We will miss him."

Gregory S. Girolami, a chemistry professor at Illinois, said Lauterbur was "most proud" that it [an MRI] could save patients from unnecessary surgery.

Lauterbur, during an appearance at Stony Brook in 2004, told Newsday: "One of the good things about these gadgets, often they rule out nasty diagnoses," something he said he had experienced a few years before when he underwent an MRI scan for the first time. "Those are the stories I feel warmest about. Someone says to me, 'Oh, I was in one of your gadgets the other day, but they didn't find anything wrong.'"

MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, technology is now widely used to allow doctors to look inside the body without invasive surgery. Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham in England were cited by the Nobel prize committee for their "seminal discoveries" in the field.

Another Long Island-based researcher, Raymond Damadian, founder of FONAR Corp. in Melville, which owns a key patent on MRI machines, has publicly denounced the Nobel committee for not including him in the prize. Many experts have said that Lauterbur and Mansfield deserved the award for making the MRI a practical, widely used technique.

The first image Lauterbur made was of a clam from Setauket Harbor found by his daughter, Sharyn Lauterbur-DiGeronimo of Selden. Noting that she has since undergone MRI scans, she said, "It's pretty amazing to know it's been a factor in my own health care."

Lauterbur was born in Sidney, Ohio. He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1951 from the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, and a doctorate in 1962 from the University of Pittsburgh. He served in the Army's Chemical Center in Edgewood, Md., in 1953-56.

Lauterbur's first marriage to RoseMary Lauterbur of South Setauket, with whom he had two children, DiGeronimo and Daniel Lauterbur, of Perry, Mich., ended in divorce.

Other survivors include a daughter, Elise Lauterbur of Urbana; a sister, Margaret McDonough of Coshocton, Ohio; and five grandchildren.

The body was cremated, and a memorial service is planned.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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