"Physics for medical sciences": a reference book to support students throughout their studies
Students
Future students
Pauline Seldeslachts
Created on
14 Oct
2025
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Initiated and coordinated by Bernard Pireaux (UCLouvain), this collective work - co-authored in particular by Professors Laurent Houssiau and Jim Plumat (UNamur) - offers a reference manual to accompany students of medicine, biomedical sciences and life sciences throughout their course. Designed as a clear, progressive and practical tool, it illustrates just how essential physics is to the understanding of living organisms and to medical practice.
In France, as in Belgium, medical students generally receive little teaching in physics during their course of study. This situation has its roots in history: until the XIXᵉ century, vitalism - a scientific current that originated in the XVIIIᵉ - postulated that living beings were animated by a "vital force" that escaped physical and chemical laws. Gradually, this vision gave way to mechanism, which asserted that even the most complex biological phenomena obeyed the same universal laws as inanimate matter. This transition marked a decisive stage in the history of science, consecrating the fundamental role of physics in the understanding of the living.
It is in this spirit that the book Physics for Medical Sciences, coordinated by Bernard Pireaux, Professor of Physics at the Catholic University of Louvain, is set. A genuine training tool, it brings together all the essential physics concepts useful to students of medicine, life sciences or biomedical sciences.
Clear, ambitious objectives
Reconcile students with physics by emphasizing its central role in the health sciences.
Initiate students from the very beginning of their course with the fundamental laws of physics, which are essential to their training.
In-depth understanding of the physical mechanisms underlying physiological phenomena, right down to their cellular dimensions.
Modeling more complex physiological systems.
Support students throughout their course of study, and even beyond.
Over a year of collaborative work
With over 600 pages, this book is much more than a simple syllabus: it aims to be a veritable "bible" of physics applied to the medical sciences. Its writing mobilized several teacher-researchers for over a year.
At UNamur, two physics professors played a key role:
Jim Plumat, Professor of Physics Emeritus at UNamur, signed chapter 11 devoted to light, the eye and vision.
This book is a reminder that physics is not a cold, abstract science, but an essential key to understanding and caring for the living. It's a genuine invitation to rediscover the beauty of the link between matter, life and medicine.
Jim PlumatEmeritus Professor of Physics, UNamur
Laurent Houssiau, Professor of Physics at UNamur, wrote Chapters 2 and 3 on kinematics and dynamics, and contributed to Chapter 4 on deformable solids.
With 25 years' experience teaching physics to medical students, he explains:
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It's a real challenge to teach physics to medical students. I love it and have been doing it every year for 25 years. I know their problems and their questions, which I've learned through contact with them. And every year is different, which also allows me to learn new things.
Laurent HoussiauProfessor of physics at UNamur
Based on concrete medical examples and clearly oriented towards medical physics, the book offers a progressive and pragmatic approach. As Laurent Houssiau points out:"This book is perfectly suited to our students of medicine, biomedical sciences and pharmaceutical sciences, as all its authors have written it in the same spirit."
An innovative teaching approach
Designed as a genuine biophysics course, the book is aimed at French and Belgian medical students as well as those enrolled in life and health sciences programs. Each chapter features:
an introduction to situate and contextualize the subject,
many exercises and corrected MCQs,
one or more medical case studies, particularly in physiology.
The project represents a first in the field. With this publication, students finally have a solid reference tool tailored to their needs, to better understand the physical basics essential to medical practice.
