Portrait of Godfrey Hounsfield

Birthday profile

Godfrey Hounsfield

Godfrey Hounsfield, English biophysicist and engineer Nobel Prize laureate (died 2004)

Born
August 28, 1919
Died
August 12, 2004
Zodiac sign
Virgo
Birth year
1919

About Godfrey Hounsfield

Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield was a British electrical engineer who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Allan MacLeod Cormack for his part in developing the diagnostic technique of X-ray computed tomography (CT). Hounsfield built a prototype head scanner and tested it first on a preserved human brain, then on a fresh cow brain from a butcher’s shop, and later on himself. At EMI, he became interested in computers and in 1958, he helped design the first commercially available all-transistor computer made in Great Britain: the EMIDEC 1100.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

The world when Godfrey Hounsfield was born

Godfrey Hounsfield was born in 1919. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1919

  • Best-selling book"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" – Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentBlack Sox scandal — 1919 World Series fixed
  • Top headlineTreaty of Versailles signed — 18th Amendment (Prohibition)
  • Technology milestoneFirst nonstop transatlantic flight (Alcock & Brown)
  • Defining fadOuija boards
  • Notable inventionPop-up toaster
  • World population~1.79B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWoodrow Wilson
  • U.S. population103.2M

1919 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Godfrey Hounsfield's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19192026
Gas$0.25$3.45/gal
Average home$5,000$435,000
Average income$2,000$67,500
Movie ticket$0.15$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population103.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.