조장희 趙長熙
Medical physicist and brain scientist who contributed to the development of PET (positron emission tomography)
| Life | 1936 |
| Era | 현대 |
| Clan | 배천 조씨 |
Life & career
Jo Jang-hui (Zang-Hee Cho) was born on 15 July 1936 in Geumsan-myeon, Yeonbaek County, Hwanghae Province, and is a Korean-born physicist and brain scientist of the Baecheon Jo clan. He graduated in electronic engineering from Seoul National University in 1960, completed its master's course in 1962 and received a doctorate in applied physics from Uppsala University in Sweden in 1966. He then worked as assistant and associate professor of nuclear physics at Stockholm University and as research associate professor and senior researcher in radiation physics at the University of California, was a full professor at Columbia University in 1979-85, and was at UC Irvine from 1985 to 2006.
He began research related to computed tomography (CT) in 1972 and is described as having developed a ring-type positron emission tomography (PET) scanner in 1975; the source says most PET systems today follow this ring design. He is also credited with the BGO detector for PET in 1977, a 2.0-tesla MRI in 1985 and PET-MRI fusion technology in 2007. He was a professor at KAIST in 1978-95.
In Korea he has been endowed professor and head of the Neuroscience Research Institute at Gachon Medical School (2004-14), a special researcher at Seoul National University's convergence institute (2015), endowed professor at the University of Suwon (2017-19) and, from November 2019, endowed professor and head of the brain science convergence center at Korea University. He became a member of the US National Academies in 1997 and of the National Academy of Sciences of Korea (1998-2005). Awards listed include a 1982 Distinguished Scientist Award, the 1984 Jacob Javits Neuroscience Award of the US NIH (shared with S. Hilal), the 1986 Sylvia Sorkin Greenfield Award of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and a 2005 presidential citation. As he is a living person, this entry summarizes only the public career listed in Wikipedia.
Education and Early Career
He studied electronic engineering at Seoul National University (BS 1960, MS 1962) and applied physics at Uppsala (PhD 1966), then worked on nuclear and radiation physics at Stockholm University and the University of California.
PET and MRI
He is credited with the ring-type PET (1975), the BGO detector for PET (1977), a 2.0-tesla MRI (1985) and PET-MRI fusion (2007). Claims of being "the first in the world" follow Wikipedia's wording and are best checked against primary papers.
Academic Work and Awards
He was a member of the US National Academies (1997) and of the National Academy of Sciences of Korea (1998-2005) and won the NIH Jacob Javits Neuroscience Award (1984, shared). Alongside Jo Gyeong-cheol he is presented as a scientist of the Baecheon Jo clan.