In 1968, Dr. Josef Pacák, Zdeněk Točík and Miloslav Černý at the Department of Organic Chemistry, Charles University, Czechoslovakia were the first to describe the synthesis of FDG. Later, in the 1970s, Tatsuo Ido and Al Wolf at the Brookhaven National Laboratory were the first to describe the synthesis of FDG labeled with fluorine-18. The compound was first administered to two normal human volunteers by Abass Alavi in August, 1976 at the University of Pennsylvania.  Brain images obtained with an ordinary (non-PET) nuclear scanner demonstrated the concentration of [F]FDG in that organ (see history reference below).
Beginning in August 1990, and continuing throughout 1991, a shortage of oxygen-18, a raw material for FDG, made it necessary to ration isotope supplies. Israel's oxygen-18 facility had shut down due to the Gulf War, and the U.S. government had shut down its isotopes of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory, leaving Isotec as the main supplier. Please see the comparative figure below for further history of the FDG molecule.