Raymond Damadian
Four Remarkable things about Ray Damadian
Value of respecting elders
Musical talent
Intellect
Fierce survival instinct
Born in New York City in 1936 Raymond Damadian had a desire to learn. He was always reading, drawing and building things. He was gifted in many areas. He began studying the violin at the age of 5 and four years later auditioned for study at Juilliard and was accepted. There he learned just how demanding classical music is with countless hours of practice and attention to detail which carried throughout his life. He played professional tennis in his teens while attending Forest Hills High School known for its excellent science curriculum. There, his science teacher inspired Raymond with his discussion of the impact new scientific discoveries were having on mankind while his trigonometry instructor showed him the satisfaction that comes with solving math problems.
“Both men partnered in planting a seed in me, a desire to know, to discover, and to bring clarity to confusion.” Raymond Damadian – Gifted Mind ; the Dr. Raymond Damadian Story
At 15 Raymond was one of 200 finalists who were offered a full college scholarship to attend one of the four universities participating in the Ford Foundation’s “Pre-Induction Scholarship program”. He attended the University of Wisconsin and after two years he enrolled in the pre-med program receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in 1956. He enrolled in the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in the Bronx, NY. Upon graduation and military service, he joined the faculty at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn as an assistant Professor in medicine and biophysics.
Dr. Raymond Damadian, Dr. Lawrence Minkoff and Dr. Michael Goldsmith (left to right) and the completed Indomitable (the world’s first magnetic resonance scanner) that performed the first scan of a live human being. National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported fundamental research led to the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. (Courtesy of the National Science Foundation and the FONAR Corporation.)
In a 1971 paper in the journal Science, Damadian reported that tumors can be detected in vivo (in a living organism) by nuclear magnetic resonance because of much longer relaxation times than normal tissue. He suggested that these differences could be used to detect cancer, even in the early stages where it would be most treatable. That same year: Dr. Damadian applied for a patent : Apparatus and Method for Detecting Cancer in Tissue and received the patent in 1974. All told he and his colleagues applied for over 160 patents for the design and creation of MRI body scanners and the first patent application in 1971 was the first of 4,552 patents for MRI issued by the United States Patent Office.
In 1978 Dr. Damadian set up his own company, FONAR, to manufacture his magnetic resonance scanners. The Food and Drug Administration approved commercial sale of MRI scanners in 1984 and since that time several other companies have begun to manufacture the scanners. He received a National Medal of Technology Award in 1988 from President Ronald Reagan and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1989. His original MRI full-body scanner was given to the Smithsonian Institution in the 1980s. In 2001 the Lemelson-MIT Prize Program bestowed its $100,000 Lifetime Achievement Award on Dr. Damadian as “the man who invented the MRI scanner”.
To sum up his life lessons one has only to read the opening paragraph of Chapter 4 entitled Grit and Determination from his book Gifted Mind:
It’s been said that anything worth having is worth working for, and that anything worth doing is worth doing well. Over time, I have seen how those maxims have played themselves out in my life, leading many people to describe me as Determined, Driven, Focused, Impatient, Intense. Even Obsessed. Guilty on all counts.”