What a wonderful story lies behind yesterday's announcement that a British scientist Sir Peter Mansfield has won the Nobel prize for medicine. Clearly he's one of the world's great scientists but his story holds a message of hope for everyone who didn't do that well at school. Because Sir Peter left school at the age of fifteen with no qualifications and an ambition to become - a printer.

In fact he might never have developed an interest in science had it not been for the V2 rockets that fell on London towards the end of the second world war. That led to an interest in explosives and one thing led to another. So never believe that leaving school with no qualifications means that the doors of the future are closed. Two of the most successful people I've ever met were told by their headmasters that they'd never amount to anything. Once in a while, hope and a focused mind can defeat any setback.

Sir Peter's achievement is hopeful in another way as well. He discovered that the nuclei of atoms have a spin that can be controlled by a magnetic field, and when they return to normal, the energy they've absorbed turns them into tiny radio transmitters. The stroke of genius was to see that this could be used to give continuous pictures of the inside of the human body. It's called magnetic resonance imaging, or to you and me, an MRI scan. If you've ever had one you'll know what magic it is. It's painless, harmless and produces crystal clear images. It's a major diagnostic tool, and because it's non-invasive I hope it'll one day replace many post-mortems as well.

This is science at its best, saving lives, and honouring the dignity of the human body. We've become anxious about science and its power to destroy. But for me the greatest truth was signalled long ago. The first chapter of Genesis describing creation begins with the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet; the ten commandments begin with the first: to tell us that even greatest act of creation is secondary to the uses to which we put it. Every technology can be used for good or evil, which is why the greater our scientific knowledge, the stronger must our ethics be.

Sir Peter Mansfield not only discovered MRI but saw how to turn it into a blessing. So let's raise our coffee cups and drink a toast to a man who has been, in that lovely Jewish phrase, a partner with G-d in the work of creation.

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