Rabi died at his home on Riverside Drive in Manhattan from cancer on January 11, 1988. His wife, Helen, survived him and died at the age of 102 on June 18, 2005. In his last days, he was reminded of his greatest achievement when his physicians examined him using magnetic resonance imaging, a technology that had been developed from his ground-breaking research on magnetic resonance. The machine happened to have a reflective inner surface, and he remarked: "I saw myself in that machine... I never thought my work would come to this."