ONCE I LOOKED INTO YOUR EYES: WITH AN INTRODUCTION

I won’t pretend I can write like Paul Muldoon. But I might be able to make more interesting pictures. Many of the spectacular achievements of twentieth-century science followed a simple paradigm. As new directions in basic atomic or molecular physics matured, they were adopted by chemists and applied physicists. This work in turn enabled applications in biological, clinical, and environmental science. The centres I direct at Princeton (including POEM, the centre for Photonics and Electronic Materials) support this process by bridging the gaps between innovation, technology, and application. Imaging technologies provide many of the best-known illustrations of this evolution. Fifty years ago, measurements of the magnetism created when atomic nuclei ‘spin’ were at the forefront of esoteric physics research, with no conceivable application. Gradually the applications became clear, and by the 1960s every modern chemistry department had ʼnuclear magnetic resonance’ spectrometers. By the 1980s most hospitals had ‘magnetic resonance imagers’ (ʼnuclear’ was dropped to avoid scaring patients) which give beautifully detailed images of soft tissue.