Sir Peter Mansfield was born on 9 October 1933 and grew up in London. He left school at fifteen to become a printer’s assistant before obtaining a government post at the Rocket Propulsion Department in Westcott, Buckinghamshire. After national service, he studied at night school for the qualifications that gave him entrance, in 1956, to Queen Mary College, University of London, where he studied physics. Sir Peter’s early work was in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), then being used to study the chemical structure of substances. He joined the Department of Physics, University of Nottingham,...