Offline: Why physics is special

Abstract

To coincide with the death of Albert Einstein on April 18, 1955, The Lancet this week publishes a series of papers and comments, commissioned jointly with the UK’s Institute of Physics (to whom we owe special thanks), about the past, present, and future contributions of physics to human health. Discoveries in the physical sciences have been critically important to advances in medicine for over 5000 years. Although physicists may be too modest to say this themselves, physics is the science that underpins all other sciences. To quote Ernest Rutherford: “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” Its range extends from the very largest of objects (the cosmos) to the smallest (at sub-atomic level), from the longest periods of time (the life of the universe) to the briefest (the momentary existence of some of the smallest particles). Physicists ask fundamental questions about the world—including about the body, disease, and the nature of life. Physics is at the heart of our society and so our understanding of health. * The contributions of physics to medicine have been, and continue to be, many: from diagnosis (clinical PET scanning, magnetic resonance spectroscopy) to treatment (minimal-access surgery, interventional MRI) to a combination of the two. These discoveries will only grow as the molecular mechanisms of disease become better understood and as new technologies enable the investigation of these molecular processes in vivo. In an era of post-genomic medicine, physicists will have an increasingly vital part to play in the discovery of new diagnostic techniques and treatment modalities. One example is personalised medicine. Personalisation means the application of genomic and molecular data to better target the delivery of health care. In place of the hitherto successful reductionism of the biological sciences, systems science, rooted in principles of physics, will be needed to enable the development of strategies for personalised health care to fl ourish in the future. The human body is not simply the sum of its components. Diseases are inherently complex and are not amenable to reductionist thinking. A