On 1 October 1971 Jamie Ambrose, a consultant radiologist at Atkinson Morley's Hospital in Wimbledon, south London, made medical history by carrying out the first computed tomography scan on a live patient, revealing a detailed image of a brain tumour. The actual scanner was the product of joint development by Ambrose, the physicist Godfrey Hounsfield (obituary BMJ 2004;329: 687), and a dedicated team of physicists and engineers.

Making medical history: Jamie Ambrose(right) with Godfrey Hounsfield

The radiology department at Atkinson Morley's had for a long time been one of the busiest in the world, using the specialised invasive radiological procedures of percutaneous angiography and pneumoencephalography in the diagnosis of neurological disease. Jamie Ambrose's mastery of these techniques made him much in demand. By the early 1960s the department was performing more than 1000 carotid angiographic studies a year and he was undertaking …