Tufts University: 175 Years of Innovation

Tufts Professor of Physics Allan M. Cormack received a Nobel Prize in 1979 for his role in developing the CT Scanner. He studied physics and crystallography at the University of Cape Town before attending St. John’s College, Cambridge as a Research Student, and finally became a professor at Tufts. His Nobel Prize was awarded “for the development of computer assisted tomography,” a process involving the use of X-rays to obtain images of the body’s interior. Cormack established the foundational theoretical framework for CT scanning by conducting experiments in constructing radiological cross-sectional views of biological systems and publishing two papers on his findings.