Historical NM Gallery
The discoveries that built nuclear medicine — from radioactivity to today’s theranostics.
Radioactivity discovered
Henri Becquerel observes radioactivity from uranium salts.
Artificial radioactivity
Irène & Frédéric Joliot-Curie create the first artificial radionuclides.
First ¹³¹I thyroid-cancer therapy
Radioiodine used to treat metastatic thyroid cancer — a founding theranostic.
Rectilinear scanner
Benedict Cassen builds the first scanner to map tracer distribution.
The gamma camera
Hal Anger invents the scintillation (Anger) camera — still the basis of SPECT.
⁹⁹Mo/⁹⁹ᵐTc generator
Brookhaven develops the generator that makes ⁹⁹ᵐTc the workhorse of nuclear medicine.
SPECT
Kuhl & Edwards pioneer single-photon emission tomography.
FDG synthesised
Ido, Wolf and colleagues make ¹⁸F-FDG and perform the first human studies.
PET/CT
Townsend & Nutt build the first PET/CT; commercial scanners arrive ~2001.
²²³Ra (Xofigo)
First alpha-emitter approved (ALSYMPCA) for bone-metastatic prostate cancer.
¹⁷⁷Lu-DOTATATE (Lutathera)
PRRT approved for GEP-NETs after NETTER-1.
¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617 (Pluvicto)
First PSMA radioligand therapy approved for mCRPC after VISION.