Medical physics and physics in medicine in Ireland (part 1: 1600-~2000)

Medical physics and other contributions from physics to medicine are relatively well known, if not well documented in Ireland. Less well known are contributions from medicine to the development of physics, which can and do occur. This paper addresses examples of all three. The methods employed include documentary research and interviews with those who share(d) the stage in the area. Documentary evidence for historical aspects of medical physics over the last century are relatively sparse and incomplete. Notwithstanding this, they can and do enable a picture to be built up of how the arrangements in place now have come about, particularly when they are accompanied by mature recollections of the participants. Good critically assessed and accessible sources have been identified covering the seventeenth to nineteenth century material presented. Examples are presented based on the work of significant contributors, each with strong Irish connections, including Robert Boyle, Erwin Schrödinger, Fearghus O'Foghludha, and Edith Stoney the first female medical physicist. Their contributions are striking and continue to be relevant now. The findings provide a rich context and heritage for medical physics in Ireland and in the international community. They will include the contemporary period in a second paper, Part 2 of this study.