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Any fool can understand IMRT

In his paper, Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT): a clinical reality for cancer treatment, "any fool can understand this" (The 2004 Silvanus Thompson Memorial Lecture) [1], Prof. Webb directs your readers to the famous book by Silvanus Thompson, Calculus made easy, from which his "any fool..." quotation is taken. I, too, would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in mathematics, but would caution that the book of that title to be ordered via Amazon, as suggested by Prof. Webb, is not the original book as displayed in his Figure 2, but is a re-write of the book by Martin Gardner [2]. Martin Gardner is an outstanding mathematician and popularizer of mathematics, but I have to say I do not believe he has left very much of the original or entirely succeeded in keeping its spirit in his new version. I would recommend looking for a second-hand copy of the original. It was this book which the teenage Richard Feynman, having discovered that "calculus is a big thing," found and taught himself from. As Feynman later wrote: "I have since realised that that particular calculus book had its especially screwy methods...and it invented proofs that weren't proofs...and there were errors in proofs...but of course the proofs were not important". Yes indeed – but Thompson's was one of the earliest attempts to present in an accessible form a subject once thought too difficult to be attempted outside a university mathematics course.

Yours etc.,

P Dawson

Directorate of Imaging, UCL Hospitals NHS Trust, 235 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BU

Received for publication January 13, 2006. Accepted for publication January 27, 2006.

References

1. Webb S. Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT): a clinical reality for cancer treatment, "any fool can understand this". Br J Radiol 2005;78:S64–S73.[Free Full Text]
2. Thompson S. Calculus made easy. Gardner M, editor. Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

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