Plaque honours professor

A PLAQUE to commemorate a Perthshire pioneer who invented the life-saving full-body MRI scanner has been unveiled in his home town of Alyth.

Professor James Hutchison developed the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner while working at Aberdeen University in 1980, changing his medical f i eld forever.

The professor, known as Jim, died in September last year aged 77.

Dr Margaret Hutchison, his wife and colleague, said he would have been thrilled to be remembered this way in the town which never left his heart.

Dr Hutchinson said: “He would have been pleased and humbled.

“He was not a person for putting himself forward and was quite shy in a way, though once you got to know him he was relaxed and quite funny. That is how a lot of his friends remember him.

“Jim was a very good human and he would have been quite touched by this.

“That he should be remembered here in his home town means a very great deal to me because I know his heart was always here. He truly was at home in Alyth.”

Prof Hutchison was born at Barony Park in the town and went to Alyth and Blairgowrie schools before attending university in Aberdeen.

After finishing his studies he joined the Aberdeen Medical Sciences group and it was there his work on the MRI got under way.

COMPETITORS have taken on Dundee University’s Brave Runner challenge.

Hundreds of people tackled the Tough Mudderinspired event at the university’s sports centre.

An army of “warriors” braved the cold for the assault course, where they jumped through tyres and completed drills such as running through camo nets.

The university’s Officers’ Training Corps put the runners through their paces as they arranged 10 obstacle courses.

A MAN is awa it i ng sentence for battering his terrified partner after a night out.

Ian Crighton, 37, left the woman fearing for her life during his frenzied attack outside the Wellgate Centre in the early hours of Sunday morning.

It was revealed the woman hid in a bush after Crighton punched and choked her outside the shopping centre on Victoria Road.

The pair had been drinking along with the victim’s sister in a city nightclub before leaving to walk home at around 3am.

Crighton, of Tullideph Street, suddenly became aggressive and attacked the woman as she began to walk away from him.

Prosecutor Gavin Burton told Dundee Sheriff Court: “The accused appeared beside her and felt him squeezing her neck which caused her to panic.

“She felt him striking her on the body and head, grabbing her hair and dragging her over the stairs.

“She was lying on the ground with the accused continually striking her on the body.