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In Memoriam: Peter N. T. Wells (1936–2017) Editor in Chief, Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (1994–2006)

2019; Elsevier BV; Volume: 45; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2019.02.017

1879-291X

Michael Halliwell, Gail ter Haar, Christy K. Holland,

Ultrasound in Clinical Applications

Peter was born in Bristol in 1936 and attended Clifton College, where his father taught mathematics. His father imparted a respect for civility, good manners and genuine care for others, features that Peter adopted and followed for the rest of his life. At school Peter built radios, enjoyed chemistry (as it gave him the chance to “blow up his sisters”), represented the school at shooting, was head electrician and became cadet sergeant major. Peter became an apprentice at GEC Ltd. and went to Birmingham College of Advanced Technology (the University of Aston) as a student apprentice electrician, obtaining a BTech (now a BSc) in Electrical Engineering in 1958. In 1960, he was appointed as basic grade medical physicist at Bristol General Hospital's Medical Physics Department, under Herbert Freundlich. While in this post and in his late twenties, he obtained an MSc and a PhD for research related to the biological effects of ultrasound. Peter was a very significant force in the field of medical ultrasound. In addition to performing high-quality research, he formed links with hospital and university staff, developing multidisciplinary teams to further the use of technology in medicine. His teaching and mentoring skills are reflected in his output: 16 books, 250 scientific papers, invited lectures in 20 countries, a member of the editorial boards of 20 journals and external examiner to graduate students at 31 universities. His value to the ultrasound and scientific community was demonstrated, in addition to his Fellowship of the Royal Society, by some of the awards he earned: Commander of the British Empire (2008); The Royal Society Royal Medal (2013); Royal Academy of Engineering Sir Frank Whittle Medal (2014); and one of the top 10 developer scientists named by The U.K. Science Council (2014). Peter's particular interest was clinical applications of therapeutic and diagnostic ultrasound. At the time therapy was very limited and, in the United Kingdom, confined almost exclusively to treatment of the symptoms of Meniere's disease and physiotherapy. In 1960, diagnostic ultrasound applications were also limited. B-Mode scanners were only just being introduced, and the gynaecological techniques of Ian Donald were in development (Donald and Brown, 1961Donald I. Brown T.G. Demonstration of tissue interfaces within the body by ultrasonic echo sounding.Br J Radiol. 1961; 34: 539-546Crossref PubMed Scopus (93) Google Scholar, Donald et al., 1958Donald I. MacVicar J. Brown T.G. Investigation of abdominal masses by pulsed ultrasound.Lancet. 1958; 271: 1188-1195Abstract Scopus (290) Google Scholar). Commercially available equipment was rare and very rudimentary. For research into ultrasound bioeffects and therapy, Peter constructed custom ultrasound therapy systems. These devices helped to improve the reliability and efficacy of routine surgical techniques and enabled research into the creation of pituitary and spinal lesions. His achievements included the development of devices for calibrating ultrasound fields: a very sensitive radiation force balance, calorimetric power measurement devices and a Schlieren system to visualise the ultrasound beam in water. His interest in power measurement and bioeffects led to the publication of the first safety guideline: Intensities below 100 mW/cm2 have not been associated with bioeffects (Wells, 1969Wells P.N.T. Physical principles of ultrasonic diagnosis. AcademicPress, London1969Google Scholar). Peter's interest in diagnosis prompted him to build the first multijoint articulated arm (elephant-trunk) ultrasound B-mode system (based on the forerunner of the diasonograph) (Christie and Tansey, 2006Christie D.A. Tansey E.M. Development of physics applied to medicine in the UK, 1945–1990. QMUL, London2006Google Scholar). He also developed a cardiac valve tracer and directional pulsed Doppler equipment. He and his team pioneered wide-dynamic-range, grey-scale imaging of soft tissues with a six-degree-of-freedom contact scanner. A water bath breast scanner was constructed for Cardiff University, and semi-automatic scanning probes for contact scanners were made. In addition to creating and using this equipment in clinical settings, Peter was extraordinarily busy teaching at both the local and national levels. Despite this level of activity, Peter was able to author two of the earliest and most significant books on the subject of medical ultrasound (Wells, 1969Wells P.N.T. Physical principles of ultrasonic diagnosis. AcademicPress, London1969Google Scholar, Wells, 1972Wells P.N.T. Ultrasonics in clinical diagnosis. Churchill Livingston, London1972Google Scholar). His illustrations are still seen during presentations on the fundamentals of ultrasound diagnosis. In 1972, he became Professor of Medical Physics in Cardiff, and in 1974, he was promoted to Leader of Medical Physics in Bristol until chronological retirement in 2001. Following retirement, he served as Distinguished Research Professor at Cardiff University from 2004 to 2017. A defining feature of his activity in medical ultrasound was his role from 1992 to 2006 as the Editor-in-Chief of Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (UMB). This position suited Peter admirably. While he was collecting material for his first two books, he had engaged in major literature searches. These duties enabled him to attribute accurately the contributions of pioneers in the field, and it gave him an extensive overview of the developments in the field. Peter ensured that the associate editors and editorial board were carefully chosen, were representative experts in the field of ultrasound and received the necessary training and oversight to perform their responsibilities adequately and actively, such as reviewing manuscripts and advising on policy considerations. He spent 9 months training, mentoring and working alongside Christy K. Holland, who assumed the editorship in 2006. His admonition to always remember that you can only put into print what is submitted continues to guide the UMB editorial office today. Peter's UMB editorship enabled him to remain abreast of developments and ideas as they appeared. One of the advantages of this experience was that he was immediately able to sift “new” ideas into those that had been tried and failed, those that had succeeded but been forgotten or those that had never been tried at all. Although this saved a great deal of work fruitlessly re-inventing the wheel, if you were a collaborator it was rather dispiriting to be told, “It's been done before—in 1956 with significant success.” However, Peter was such a gentleman that he imparted this news very kindly and praised the researcher for having thought of it, even if it was not the first time. Peter was instrumental in the creation of the British Medical Ultrasound Society (BMUS) in 1969. It was spawned by the British Medical Ultrasound Group (BMUG), which had been created as a multidisciplinary interest group by the Hospital Physicists Association. Peter and Kit Hill, among others, felt that the word “Group” did not have sufficient gravitas for this burgeoning discipline. At the 1969 annual BMUG meeting the question was raised “Do the members here want to remain ‘Groupies’ or should we rename ourselves and join ‘Society’?” The resulting show of hands sealed the group's fate. Peter served as president of BMUS in 1973 and was President of the British Institute of Radiology in 1988 and the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine in 1995. Peter maintained very strong links with BMUS and, in 2015, was invited to deliver the annual Donald, MacVicar and Brown lecture. He entitled it, “The joy of research: Is necessity the best mother of invention?” Though invariably proper, Peter was informal and always addressed as PNT. Part of Peter's charm was that he always knew the correct form of address for visitors. He knew how, properly, to introduce viscounts, professors, students, lords, duchesses, deans, members of the British Parliament, bishops, archbishops and actresses. He was careful to introduce people appropriately with respect to their status, both societal and academic. Above all, no matter their status, he was always happy to make them coffee. Even as department head, he was approachable, fair, pro-active, energetic and a considerate people manager. Peter, possibly as a result of his personal educational experience, was a very keen mentor and educator. He was an enthusiastic supporter of students and training schemes. As a research collaborator, he was keen to assign credit and to recognise historic contributions. For Peter a literature review had to go back to before the earliest publications. He positively encouraged multidisciplinary and multicentric work, engaging in many pan-global collaborations. His first retirement was forced on him by his age. When he retired at 65 from Bristol, 22 scientists from around the world came to a fest in Bristol to celebrate his career. Unwilling to stop working, he moved to Cardiff University, where he became a founding fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. He worked in Cardiff for 16 more years. Peter spent a lot of time as scientific advisor to a charity, Find a Better Way. This was set up by Bobby Charlton as a charity to combat landmines. From 2011, Peter was chairman of their Scientific and Users Advisory Panel.