MIT 150: The Top 50

Number 36: PET scans A 7-year-old daughter of a chicken farmer is an unlikely candidate to contribute to the history of medicine, but in 1953, when Holly Jane Hyde showed problems reading and understanding speech, her Massachusetts General Hospital neurosurgeon tried a newfangled device invented by MIT physicist Gordon Brownell , pictured. Injecting radioactive arsenic into her brain, her doctor discovered a previously unknown tumor. After surgery, the girl recovered – and the positron emission tomography scan, now a standard procedure in neuroscience, was born.
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Number 36: PET scans

A 7-year-old daughter of a chicken farmer is an unlikely candidate to contribute to the history of medicine, but in 1953, when Holly Jane Hyde showed problems reading and understanding speech, her Massachusetts General Hospital neurosurgeon tried a newfangled device invented by MIT physicist Gordon Brownell, pictured. Injecting radioactive arsenic into her brain, her doctor discovered a previously unknown tumor. After surgery, the girl recovered – and the positron emission tomography scan, now a standard procedure in neuroscience, was born.