Allan MacLeod Cormack

Allan MacLeod Cormack was a South African and American physicist and Nobel laureate, born in Johannesburg on February 23, 1924. He attended Rondebosch Boys High School in Cape Town and received a B.Sc. in physics in 1944 and an M.Sc. in crystallography in 1945 from the University of Cape Town. After doctoral studies at Cambridge from 1947 to 1949 he returned to Cape Town to lecture, and in 1957 he became a professor at Tufts University in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1966. Although he mainly worked on particle physics, a side interest in x-ray technology led him to develop the theoretical underpinnings of CT scanning, begun at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital in 1956. He won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Godfrey Hounsfield, a notable achievement since he held no doctoral degree in any scientific field.