Professor Laurance Hall (1938-2009)

Professor Laurance Hall, an NMR pioneer credited with building the first clinical MRI instrument in Canada, died on August 28, 2009 in Cambridge, UK aged 71.

From the Telegraph (Oct.1, 2009): "... It was during this period that Hall began to pursue his pioneering work on NMR – an interest which he took with him, on completion of his doctorate, to Canada. An eloquent and extremely enthusiastic lecturer, he easily impressed senior professors, soon securing a research post in Ottawa, and later one in Vancouver. At the Chemistry Department of the University of British Columbia, where he spent two decades (1963-84), he built – from scratch – the first MRI instrument in Canada. Later he installed for the country its first MRI scanner large enough to examine the entire human body – in a clinic opened by the Queen."

Read the complete obituary in the Telegraph.

Laurance Hall reminisces about his early research career and his work at the University of Ottawa, NRC Canada, and the University of British Columbia, in the Encyclopedia of Magnetic Resonance, Volume 1 "Historical Perspectives", Eds. Grant & Harris, Wiley, 1996, p. 378-382.