John J. Wild

John Julian Cuttance Wild (August 11, 1914 – September 18, 2009) was an English-born American physician who was part of the first group to use ultrasound for body imaging, most notably for diagnosing cancer. Modern ultrasonic diagnostic medical scans are descendants of the equipment Wild and his colleagues developed in the 1950s. He has been described as the "father of medical ultrasound".

Early life and education Wild was born in Kent, England. He attended Merchant Taylors' School in the City of London and took out his first patent at the age of 14, for a device to distribute hot and cold water evenly when filling a bathtub. At the University of Cambridge, he studied the Natural Sciences Tripos, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1936, followed by a Master of Arts in 1940 and became a Doctor of Medicine in 1942. He was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1944 and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps that same year, leaving in 1945 with the rank of major. There he spent his time treating American and British soldiers for venereal diseases. and in Science in March 1952. Wild and Reid stated that they planned the "immediate application of echography to the detection of tumors in accessible sites in the living intact human organism" through the process of "record[ing] soft tissue structure by tracing the information obtained from a sound beam sweeping through the tissues onto a fluorescent television screen". They were credited in Diagnosis of Diseases of the Breast as "the first to develop equipment specifically designed for breast scanning", as well as "the first to differentiate between cystic and solid masses in the breast by means of ultrasonography".

Death A resident of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, Wild died at age 95 on September 18, 2009, at the N. C. Little Memorial Hospice in Edina, Minnesota, because of complications from a stroke. He was survived by his wife, Valerie, as well as by a daughter, two sons and three grandchildren.