Paul C. Lauterbur invented and developed the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to create images of organs and other tissues in the human body.Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), as it is also called, has become an important tool in modern medicine as it offers a method for looking at soft tissues in the body without the use of X rays or surgery.

Paul Christian Lauterbur was born on May 6, 1929, in Sidney, Ohio, to Edward Joseph Lauterbur, a mechanical engineer, and Gertrude Wagner Lauterbur, a homemaker. The oldest of three children, Paul's brother, Edward Jospeh II, died at the age of sixteen. He also has a younger sister, Margaret McDonough.

In an interview with Lee Katterman, Lauterbur said that he spent his entire childhood in Sidney, Ohio. He was interested in all kinds of science, and he credits an aunt, Anna Pauline Lauterbur, a schoolteacher, as an important...