The World Year of Physics 2005 offers an opportunity for physicists to illustrate the central role that physics plays in our world. ICTP director K.R. Sreenivasan explains why.

Today's Physics Tomorrow

As the recent tsunami disaster illustrated, we live in an interconnected world.
The earthquake that triggered the tsunami originated in the Indian Ocean, 350 kilometers off the northwestern tip of the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. The wave thrusts that the earthquake generated barreled quickly and silently across the Indian Ocean, killing some 300,000 people along an eight-nation coastline in southeast Asia and ultimately reaching as far away as east Africa where 200 people fell victim to its wrath.
But it's also important to remember that the impact of the tsunami was felt well beyond the range of its fast-moving waves. Citizens from more than 30 countries fell victim to the wave thrusts. Sweden alone lost more than 550 citizens who were unfortunate enough to be vacationing or working in southeast Asia at the time of the earthquake.
We do indeed live in an interconnected world where we travel far, communicate easily, conduct business with distant customers and, yes, share the tragedies of disasters.
But even as the tsunami revealed our interconnectedness, it also cast a cold deathly pale over our divisions as well. The death and destruction that it left in its wake was due in part to the absence of warning systems in the countries that were affected and partly due to the poor construction and planning that characterises housing and land-use in the impoverished isolated areas that were struck.
But we don't need a tsunami to tell us how divided the world is. The average per capita income in developed countries is US$27,000 per year; the average per capita income in developing countries is US$2040. Life expectancy in the developed world is approaching 80 years of age, while life expectancy in several developing countries is slipping towards 40. Literacy rates approach 100 percent of the adult population in developed countries; in half of the developing countries, it is less than 50 percent. Internet connections, while rising virtually everywhere, remain widely disparate between rich and poor nations---and between rich and poor people in all countries.
All of this has led Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and special advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, to refer to the 'silent tsunamis' that afflict the world's least developed countries---endless tragedies created by poverty, disease, environmental degradation and, yes, lack of access to science and technology.
The rich nations of the world---and the scientific communities within rich nations---must seek to mitigate this imbalance not merely as a moral imperative, as ICTP's founding director Abdus Salam often said, but also as a practical necessity. This imperative is driven by the reality of the world in which we live and by global trends that are intensifying at an ever-accelerating pace.
The simple yet compelling fact is this: A large part of our globe belongs to the developing countries, which means that everyone must be involved in devising solutions to sustainable development. From a more ominous perspective, if we leave a sizeable portion of the world too far behind, we are all likely to suffer adverse consequences.
What is the role of science in all of this? In a word, it is 'central.' Science, of course, cannot solve all of humanity's problems, and not all scientific advances have been beneficial to society. Yet, on balance, science's contributions to society have been both fundamental and significant.
What accounts for the positive role that science has played? First, the pursuit of science, to a large extent, is devoid of political, economic, religious and other divisive issues. Therefore, science's proposed solutions, unadorned by ulterior or hidden motives, have the power to forge consensus. Only science, moreover, can give an authoritative assessment of which technologies are appropriate for solving a particular problem in a particular place. Finally, great ideas in science have had an enormous impact on culture and humanity's perception of its place in the universe. In other words, science's most significant findings have the ability of transforming our spiritual sensibilities. Think of Newtonian determinism, quantum mechanics, or relativity.
At a more practical, down-to-earth level, science---and, particularly, physics---has laid the foundation for the 'transforming technologies' of the past two centuries. The advent of electricity in the early 20th century would not have been possible without the breakthrough experiments on electrolysis conducted by Michael Faraday. The computer and internet revolution of the past few decades rests on a broad swatch of theoretical studies and experiments in condensed matter and statistical physics. And now what many view as the next great thing in science---nanotechnology---is based, in some measure, on our understanding of quantum mechanics.
But science---with physics sometimes as the lead player and sometimes in concert with such disciplines as biology, chemistry and computer science---is impacting the full range of critical human activities: agriculture, communication, electronics, advanced materials, pharmaceuticals and public health.
Here are just a few examples.
-- When the Bt gene is incorporated into corn and cotton, the new plants are resistant to many harmful insects, enabling farmers to reduce pesticides use.
-- The spread of telemedicine links---created in part by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellite system---has brought advanced health-care services to remote areas of the developing world.
-- Radiogenic isotope 'fingerprints', championed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have helped villages and regions in the developing world trace sources of contaminated water to their points of origin---an essential first step in addressing the problem.
-- Nylon and silicon filters have helped bring safe drinking water to places where water was once polluted and electricity-generating solar panels to remote areas where electricity did not exist. And now advances in nanotubes and nanocoatings promise to make both water-filtering systems and solar panels more efficient and less expensive.
The point is that the demands placed on science---and, more specifically, physics---have grown as the demands on our planet and global resources have grown.
This suggests that society will continue to depend on science---and, more specifically, physics---as problem-solving forces in the years and decades ahead, a dependency that is likely to intensify.
Yet society's investment in science, particularly in the developing world where arguably the investment is most needed, remains woefully inadequate. In the developed world, the percentage of the gross domestic product devoted to research and development averages between 2.5 and 4 percent; in the developing world, it is less than 0.5 percent. Indeed only a handful of developing countries---notably, Brazil, China, and India---have recently increased their investment in research and development to more than 1 percent of their GDP. For the world's least developed countries, the percentage often hovers between 0.2 and 0.3 percent.
What accounts for this disparity? The major force driving a wedge between North-South investments and capabilities in science has to do with differences in the culture of science and the governments' disparate commitments to scientific research. Specifically, too many developing countries suffer from a:
-- Lack of entrepreneurship and a debilitating alienation of scientists from their societies, which too often view science as a product of the North.
-- Monetary policies that are driven by regressive forms of taxation and a dependence on entitlements that undermine both investments in science and incentives to pursue scientific careers.
-- Political environments that cultivate corruption, instability and exploitation by rich countries.
-- Inability to appreciate the connection between science and wealth creation.
While several developing countries---notably, the large and relatively rich developing countries of Brazil, China and India---have recently taken important steps to rectify their shortcomings in investing in science (with promising results), the developing world as a whole will not be able to take advantage of what science has to offer their economic development strategies unless they address the following broad concerns.
First, developing countries must be willing to invest in promising young scientists to ensure that they fulfil their potential. The focus must be on the most talented young students regardless of their institutional affiliation, and the level of funding must be adequate and sustained. Second, developing countries must make a concerted effort to create transparent institutions that reward excellence. This effort must extend across the broad landscape of scientific institutions to include universities, research institutes, science academies and science ministries. And third, developing countries must foster active networks of institutions centered on concerns of critical importance to their nations. Such knowledge-sharing networks will help to maximise the scientific talent and know-how that exists within their borders.
As study after study has shown, sustained public investments in science generate rates of returns running between 20 and 65 percent. But even more importantly, investments in science improve people lives by addressing health and environmental concerns; by providing solutions to energy needs; by enhancing security and combatting terrorism; and by generating wealth and potentially reducing the disparities in well-being that exist between various regions of the globe.
The devastating tsunami that struck southeast Asia last December led to a call for scientists to lend their expertise to efforts intended to minimise the possibilities of a repeat of this tragic event (see "Tsunami Physics," p. 2). But science and physics play key roles in our everyday lives as well. The world knows that. It's up to physicists during the World Year of Physics 2005 to reaffirm this fact and to do so in ways that illustrate just how central the pursuit of science is to our shared desire to make the world and particularly the developing world a healthier, wealthier and more secure place in which to live.

K.R. Sreenivasan
ICTP Director
Abdus Salam Honorary Professor

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