After marrying Barbara, he returned to the University of Cape Town in early 1950 to lecture. Following a sabbatical atHarvard in 1956–57, the couple agreed to move to the United States, and Cormack became a professor atTufts University in the fall of 1957. Cormack became anaturalized citizen of the United States in 1966. Although he was mainly working onparticle physics, Cormack's side interest in x-ray technology led him to develop the theoretical underpinnings of CT scanning. This work was initiated at the University of Cape Town andGroote Schuur Hospital in early 1956 and continued briefly in mid-1957 after returning from his sabbatical. His results were subsequently published in two papers in the Journal of Applied Physics in 1963 and 1964. These papers generated little interest untilHounsfield and colleagues built the first CT scanner in 1971 in the UK, taking Cormack's theoretical calculations into a real application. For their independent efforts, Cormack and Hounsfield shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It is notable that the two built a very similar type of device without collaboration in different parts of the world [3]. He was member of the International Academy of Science, Munich. In 1990, he was awarded theNational Medal of Science.[4]
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