Fonar presses case for Damadian recognition

Oct 16, 2003

MRI developer Fonar of Melville, NY, has stepped up its efforts to pressure the Nobel Prize committee to recognize the work of its founder and president, Dr. Raymond Damadian, for the invention of magnetic resonance imaging. The company has formed a "Friends of Raymond Damadian Committee," which will pay all advertising costs related to its lobbying effort.

The Nobel committee earlier this month announced that Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield would share the Nobel Prize for medicine in recognition of the impact of their research on the development of MRI. Conspicuously absent was Damadian, who also conducted influential early work in MRI but who was not recognized by the Nobel committee.

Expanding on the position taken in its ads in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, Fonar claimed in a press release yesterday that the Nobel Prize committee had not only slighted Damadian by not including him among the Nobel winners, but that it also had insulted the U.S. Patent Office and two former U.S. presidents.

"The Nobel Committee also delivered an affront to our Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush, both of whom acknowledged Dr. Damadian’s contributions to mankind by awarding him the National Medal of Technology and by his induction into the U.S. Patent Office National Inventors Hall of Fame," Fonar said.

Fonar said it hopes to reach millions of people with its publicity campaign, and the company is urging those who see the ads to write to the Nobel committee and voice their opinion.

By AuntMinnie.com staff writers
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