AGNIR Member: Professor Francis Duck

Professor Francis Duck is a medical physicist at the Royal United Hospital Bath, and visiting professor at the University of Bath. He has degrees from the universities of Nottingham (BSc in physics) and London (PhD, DSc). Research in the medical applications of ultrasound took him to Memorial University of Newfoundland, the Mayo Clinic and the Institute of Cancer Research, before joining the NHS in 1978. He has helped to define safety boundaries for the diagnostic use of ultrasound, through the measurement of ultrasound exposure, fundamental studies of acoustic nonlinearity, and investigations of heat and force generation due to ultrasound exposure.  He has served on IEC standards committees for ultrasound safety, and on safety committees of the World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, the American Institute for Ultrasound in Medicine and the European Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, of which he was chair. In 2007 he was awarded the MBE for services to health care.

Last reviewed: 15 April 2010