Peter Mansfield
He used to live next door to us. His wife was frightful.
Sir Peter Mansfield, Nobel Laureate; saver of countless lives; proud Beestonian is buried today.
Rather than write our own eulogy, our friend Alison has this wonderful tribute:
Sure he invented MRI and won lots of awards.
But the things I loved about him:
- he was a very humble and shy man and not some kind of academic demigod
- he loved a simple burger from Maccy D's
- he loved to drive his Ford Ka rather than use his Rolls
- he boogied to Abba at his 80th birthday
- he once ran out of petrol in his Rolls and wanted to syphon petrol from our clapped out Renault Campus (now wouldn't that have made a photo)
- he loved his family who supported him in all he did
- he was incredibly interested in other cultures and used to get his foreign PhD students to teach him their languages, songs and poems
- what he achieved, he achieved the hard way. No silver spoon for Sir Peter, he studied at night school
- he gave credit to his wife - who once asked him what use his work was to real people
- he hung up on the Nobel Committee as he thought it was a prank
- he didn't believe he had made a difference
