November 9th 2014

Google images

I was surprised to be asked recently for a photograph of Professor David Allison by a colleague who wanted to mention him in a talk that he was due to give on the history of interventional radiology. My surprise was not due to David's inclusion in such a lecture – indeed his exclusion would have been extraordinary – but that my colleague had not been able to find a single photograph of David on the Internet. Clear in my own mind that his search had been less than thorough I opened up Google images with the intention of finding a suitable photograph on-line in just a few seconds and sending it to the lecturer with a pithily-written reply implying that he should try a bit harder next time. Half an hour later I admitted defeat and sent off the two adjacent photographs that I already had on my computer.

I wonder how it is that David Allison, a key figure in UK and World Radiology and co-author of arguably the most important Radiology text-book worldwide, 'Grainger and Allison' – the 6th Edition of which has just been published – does not have his photograph on the Internet. Clearly the fact that the world wide web was still in its infancy during the later years of David's career has something to do with it, but this cannot be the whole story because if one types the name of any other radiologist of equal (or lesser) standing from the same era into Google Images – Robert Steiner; Ronald Grainger; Robert Dondelinger; Thomas Sos; Fred Keller; Christoph Zollikofer; Peter Mueller; to name but a few – one or more of their photographs is immediately available. I suspect that modesty has something to do with this omission; either that or its a conspiracy! Whatever the reason, I hope that this blog, and the inclusion of the photographs of David on the left, will put this right.

In May 2011 I was delighted and honoured to be asked to give a citation for David on the day that he was awarded the Gold Medal by the Royal College of Radiologists. I have written what I said on that day as a WTDW article which you can read by clicking on the following link: Professor David Allison.