by Darlinda McDonald
Dr. Damadian and his wife Donna became friends and faithful supporters of Bill Rudge Ministries after they met Bill and Karen while both their daughters were roommates in college. Bill was honored to perform Keira Damadian’s wedding in 2001. Dr. Damadian, renowned physician and scientist, is among the greatest inventors in history and one of the most intelligent scientists alive today.
Dr. Raymond V. Damadian is known around the world as the man who invented the first Magnetic Resonance Scanning machine (MRI). Born into a French-Armenian family in New York in 1936 that encouraged higher education, Dr. Damadian graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in mathematics followed by an M.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. In younger days, he studied violin at the famous Julliard School for eight years. While there, Damadian competed with nearly 100,000 applicants and won a Ford Foundation Scholarship when he was only 15.
Dr. Damadian’s desire for excellence has culminated in numerous awards including the National Medal of Technology, the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award and The Economist’s Innovation Award in Bioscience. He has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and was named the Knights of Vartan Man of the Year in 2003. In addition, Dr. Damadian was nominated for the Nobel Prize for developing the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanning technology that has revolutionized modern diagnostic medicine and saved countless lives.
The book, A Machine Called Indomitable, tells the remarkable story of this visionary scientist who, against incalculable odds, fulfilled his dream and created an accessible, safe, nonradiological means of determining the chemical makeup of every cell in the body.
Dr. Damadian’s most important achievement, however, was the personal commitment he made to Jesus Christ at a Billy Graham Crusade at Madison Square Garden in 1957. According to an article written by Bob Chuvala inChristianity Today, 1997, Dr. Damadian nearly lost his faith while in pursuit of building the world’s first human scan. Work became his god and both he and his family suffered for it. “Once I was driven to my knees in prayer, things started to happen,” declared Dr. Damadian. “I don’t know what it’s like for people in other professions, but for the scientific mind, the Bible is wonderful if you read it from start to finish. It fits together with an astonishing consistency, which was the opposite of my secular perception. My early impressions were that it was rife with contradictions.”
Dr. Damadian is a firm believer in the biblical account of creation during a six-day stretch about 6,000 years ago. He says, “The non-biblical account would have us believe that all life originated from a single common ancestor – a slime mold – and give or take a billion years, we’re expected to believe that the descendants of this slime mold climbed out of the ocean and stood up and started giving lectures. Do the math on that. The sheer statistics of that violate any sense of reality.” Dr. Damadian believes the subject of evolution is not science but science fiction. For example, it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
In his article, “Discovering the MRI Scanner,” Guideposts, January 1999, Dr. Damadian wrote that he now understands what the Apostle Paul called the renewed mind. He is convinced that Paul’s declaration, “In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3), is the only way to account for the spontaneous onset of the incongruous idea to scan the entire human body by the test-tube technology named NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance). Out of a mind renewed by Jesus came the obvious. How could a scientist achieve his goal of discovering the absolute truths that govern the natural world without the blessing of the Author of those truths? For me now the true thrill of science is the search to understand a small corner of God’s grand design, and to lay the glory for such discoveries at the Grand Designer’s feet.
With all his successes, here is Dr. Damadian’s greatest scientific discovery as quoted in Creation magazine, 1994: “The highest purpose a man can find for his life is to serve the will of God.”
You can learn more about the incredible life and faith of Dr. Damadian, in his new book, Gifted Mind, The Dr. Raymond Damadian Story, Inventor of the MRI. For more information, contact Master Books, P.O. Box 726, Green Forest, AR 72638.
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