University professor Paul Lauterbur, who shared the 2003 Nobel Prize for his work to develop magnetic resonance imaging technology, died Tuesday at his home in Urbana. He was 77.

“Paul’s influence is felt around the world every day, every time an MRI saves the life of a daughter or a son, a mother or a father,” Richard Herman, chancellor of the Champaign-Urbana campus said in a written statement. “He will be greatly missed.”

Lauterbur died of kidney disease, according to a University news release.

Lauterbur, born in Sidney, Ohio, in 1929, taught at Illinois since 1985, according to the news release.

While teaching chemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the 1970s, he started using magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study living organisms. He eventually learned that, by placing an organism, he first used a clam, inside a constant magnetic field and then applying a second magnetic field of varying strength, he could produce sharper images of the different tissues in the organism than previously possible.

His co-Nobel winner, Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham in England, showed how the radio signals emitted by the tissues being observed could be analyzed.

In a 2003 interview with Reuters, Lauterbur said his MRI work had dominated his career.

“Once one has an idea, the many possibilities become apparent, and so, it seized hold of me for about a quarter of a century,” he said.

Lauterbur earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Case Institute of Technology and a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh, according to the University news release. At the University of Illinois, he was a professor of chemistry.

His daughter, Elise Lauterbur of Urbana, said Tuesday that she will remember her father, more than anything, for his jokes.

“He always had jokes,” she said. “They were often kind of goofy.”

Lauterbur also is survived by his wife, University professor Joan Dawson; son, Daniel Lauterbur; and daughter Sharyn Lauterbur-DiGeronimo.