Hello baby

Two hundred and seventy days. Thirty-six weeks. Three trimesters. However you put it, nine months is a long time.

Thankfully, these days we don't have to wait that long to get a first glimpse of a new child. Ultrasound scans are painless, safe and reliable; a defining moment in any woman's pregrancy. They were developed at Glasgow by Professor Ian Donald.

Professor Donald had served as a Medical Officer in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He had the idea that radar and sonar technology could be adapted for medical diagnosis. However, as Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University, his early experiments using an industrial ultrasonic metal flaw detector on tumours were greeted with scepticism.

Undaunted, the professor worked with TG Brown of the scientific instrument makers Kelvin & Hughes to create the first diagnostic ultrasound machine, and in 1958 he published his findings with TG Brown and John MacVicar in the Lancet. The article was one of the defining publications in the field.

Professor Donald's wait was over...and so was ours.

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