ICTP served as a co-sponsor of the concluding event for The World Year of Physics 2005---an event that was more of a beginning than an end.

World Year of Physics
Looks to Future

The centennial anniversary of Albert Einstein's annus mirabilis (miraculous year) provided the rationale for celebrating the World Year of Physics 2005.
But it was the future, not the past, that defined the endless array of events that took place across the globe last year to examine the vital role that physics plays in our world.
Such forward-looking thinking also shaped the agenda of the World Year of Physics' concluding event: the World Conference on Physics and Sustainable Development, held in Durban, South Africa, from 31 October to 2 November.
More than 300 physicists from around the world attended the event, which was co-sponsored by ICTP, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), and the South African Institute of Physics (SAIP).
The conference focussed on the relationship of physics to four major issues of broad public concern: education; energy and the environment; health; and economic development.
"The meeting," noted Edmund Zingu, president of the South African Institute of Physics and one of the major organisers of the event, "represented a modest step to redirect the attention and efforts of physicists towards the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)."
The MDGs, says Zingu, "focus on such critical global concerns as poverty reduction, improved environmental management and education."
What makes the MDGs unique are that benchmarks have been established in each of these areas so that in the future researchers and public officials can assess the progress---or lack of progress---that has been made. For example, the MDGs call on the global community to reduce the number of people worldwide who do not yet have access to safe drinking water by 50 percent by 2015.
"Many people," notes K.R. Sreenivasan, director of ICTP, "think that basic physics is an ivory tower pursuit that has little bearing on economic development. That's simply not true."
Without physics, Sreenivasan continues, "we could not speak of the nuclear age, the computer age, or the age of the internet, three of the defining forces shaping our global community over the past century."
While we often think of physics as a cutting-edge science of primary importance to developed countries, Claudio Tuniz, ICTP's assistant director, observes that "it can also serve as a valuable tool for developing countries."
"The modelling that is essential for evaluating potential earthquake and tsunami activity and for forecasting the behaviour of typhoons and monsoons is based on the principles of statistical physics. Biophysics is providing critical insights into the field of genomics that could play a central role in efforts to curb tropical diseases. On another front, the emerging field of nanotechnology could lead to the production of nano-filtering systems capable of purifying water at a cost that even the poorest villages in the world will be able to afford. In each of these areas, physics plays---and will continue to play---a central role."
The importance of physics to the developing world was reflected by the large number of physicists from the South who attended the event. Some 180 of the 321 participants were from the developing world. Women were also well represented, accounting for about 25 percent of the total. Speakers at the event included John Mugabe, advisor on science and technology to the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD); Yang Guozhen, president of the Chinese Physical Society; and Rob Adam, director-general, Department of Science and Technology, South Africa. Talks were also given by Sara Farley, science and technology specialist and consultant to the World Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation; and Marvin Cohen, president of the American Physical Society.
To help ensure that the conference's broad ideals are translated into tangible plans of action, participants unanimously agreed to a resolution that offers a concrete strategy for moving ahead. Specific groups of scientists and scientific institutions have been asked to implement parts of the plan and monitor its progress.
Under the theme of physics education, the resolution/action plan calls for the development of high-quality internet-based instructional material designed to enhance physics teaching, particularly in developing countries. Model teacher-training workshops, drawing on this instructional material, will be held in Africa, Asia and Latin America. ICTP and the Institute of Physics in the UK are among the primary groups that have been asked to spearhead this effort. The goal is to nurture student interest in physics and ultimately increase the number of students who choose physics as a career path.
Under the theme of physics and economic development, the resolution/action plan calls for the development of courses to help provide physicists, especially those in developing countries, with a greater understanding of the knowledge and skills that it takes to successfully commercialise their research. The courses will focus on the challenges posed by intellectual property rights and patenting, and will explore the steps that must be taken to bring technology-based products and services to market. ICTP will host the pilot course, which will be held in Trieste in 2006. The purpose of this effort is to help ensure that physicists can participate in the commercialisation of their intellectual property, if they so choose, from a position of knowledge and strength.
Under the theme of physics, energy and the environment, the resolution/action plan calls on the physics community to expand its role as a 'bridge of knowledge' in ways that help to balance the world's increasing appetite for energy with its desire to protect and preserve the environment. Physics has played---and will continue to play---a central role in increasing the efficiency of energy production and consumption and in charting a course for the development of alternative energy sources. Basic physics research could also prove essential for reducing the levels of pollution that accompany energy use. Specifically, the plan calls for the creation of an international physicist network devoted to renewable energy.
Under the theme of physics and health, the resolution/action plan highlights the role of physics in clinical medicine and calls for greater cooperation between physicists working in traditional institutes of physics and those working in medical research centres and hospitals. It also calls for the development of guidelines for medical physics educational programmes, which have expanded enormously over the past two decades. Other possible avenues of exploration include an examination of the role that physics could play in telemedicine, which is helping to revolutionise medical practice in remote areas of the developing world, and the potential impact that the emerging field of bio-nanotechnology could have, for example, on targeted cancer therapies that may improve the effectiveness of current regimens.
The hope is that the groups of scientists and scientific institutions involved in the implementation and monitoring of the resolution/action plan will approve the plan by this summer.
"The World Year of Physics 2005," says Sreenivasan, "has proven to be an enormous success in raising the public profile of physics and in re-energising the physics community's efforts to reach out to the larger society. Now we must be sure that we don't lose momentum and that we remain diligent in our efforts to fulfil the goals we have laid out for ourselves. We should be pleased with what we have accomplished over the past year but not pleased enough to become complacent."
Or, as one observer noted, the end of the World Year of Physics doesn't mean the end of physics. Indeed far from it.

For additional information on the World Year of Physics and the Durban conference, see www.wcpsd.org.

TALKING POINTS
The World Conference on Physics and Sustainable Development also featured plenary lectures that helped frame the major themes of the conference. Walter Erdelen, assistant director general for natural sciences, UNESCO, emphasised the important role that basic physics research plays in development and expressed concern that declining enrolments in physics in schools across the globe may spell trouble for meeting the challenges of development in the years ahead. Werner Burkart, deputy director general and head of the Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), underlined the critical role that the sciences, and particularly basic nuclear science, play in meeting such basic needs as nutrition, access to safe water, and disease prevention. And Hans Falk Hoffman, director of technical transfer and scientific computing, CERN, stressed how physics both instigates and benefits from advances in rapid broad-band access to electronic information.

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