The passing of Rustum Roy, PhD, material scientist and homeopathic advocate

[Dana Ullman, MPH]

Dear Friends,

It is with a heavy heart that I convey to you that RUSTUM ROY, PhD., professor emeritus in material sciences at Penn State University, has passed away at 86 years of age.

Dr. Roy was a highly regarded professor of material sciences who had a real appreciation for alternative medicine and homeopathic medicine. Dr. Roy created the Material Sciences Lab at Penn State, and this laboratory and his department at Penn State has consistently been recognized as one of the best in the world.

One personal story with Dr. Roy comes immediately to mind...

Just after Dr. Roy published one of his important articles on homeopathy, he participated in a press conference sponsored by the National Center for Homeopathy. One of the reporters at this press conference was from the respected scientific magazine, "The New Scientist." This reporter initially startled all of us by asserting that he previously worked and wrote for "Nature" magazine, but then, he noted that in order to get that job, one of the editors at "Nature" posed a difficult technical question to him for which he was required to read one of Dr. Roy's articles. The reporter noted that Dr. Roy solved a very complex question in a sophisticated fashion, and because this reporter was able to convey Dr. Roy's wisdom to his interviewer at "Nature," he got the job.

This reporter told Dr. Roy that he had followed his career ever since and has been consistently impressed by his scholarship and inventive thinking. The reporter wrote an impressively positive article about homeopathy and the work of Dr. Rustum Roy, entitled "Water: The Quantum Elixir" -- http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 ... lixir.html OR

http://www.proxywhore.com/invboard/inde ... opic=48470

For those of us involved in homeopathy, it is impressive that the editors at "Nature" had enough respect for Dr. Roy that they used some of his work in material sciences to determine whether to employ science writers (sadly but predictably, the editors at "Nature" have changed their attitudes towards Dr. Roy even since he expressed special appreciation and respect for homeopathic medicine, once again proving the problems inherent in fundamentalism of various sorts, including scientific fundamentalism).

Despite Dr. Roy's advancing age, he maintained strong and sharp intellectual capacities to the very end...

Evidence of his mental acuity is the fact that for the past couple of years he has co-hosted an truly excellent internet radio show with Huffingtonpost blogger Alison Rose Levy called "WHOLE PERSON HEALING via BODY MIND SPIRIT" -- http://www.voiceamerica.com/voiceameric ... x?sid=1601 The list of guests that he and Alison interviewed on this show represent a who's who in "whole person healing."

http://rustumroy.com/ (this website is full of useful information and links)

As a material scientist, he understood that it is not simply necessary to understand the chemical composition of a substance but to understand its structure. He commonly noted that the strongest mineral in the world is the diamond, which is made of pure carbon. He then also notes that the weakest mineral in the world is graphite, which is also made out of pure carbon. His lesson here is that the structure of a substance is critical. Dr. Roy then asserts that the bubbles and nano-bubbles that occur from the shaking of double-distilled water charges the water pressure in glass vials to attain 10,000 atm (atmospheres). Making a homeopathic medicine in this highly pressurized water is NOT the same thing as simple water.
Dr. Roy was known to call people who deny the wide variety of scientific evidence for homeopathy to be "homeophobes." He laughed at their ignorance about homeopathy and about real science, though he was saddened by their extreme arrogance.

Dana Ullman, MPH
Homeopathic Educational Services
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[John Harvey]

Thank you, Dana. Professor Roy made rational denial impossible of a number of independent lines of straightforward evidence for the existence of the phenomenon we know as homoeopathic potency. For that alone, he and his work should be remembered with respect. He took that work a step further in establishing the promising beginnings of technologies to measure potency and to distinguish between the same ultramolecular potencies of different substances.

Professor Roy was hard-working and imaginative. His imagination was so productive because he nurtured it with both freedom and discipline: he refused to stunt his thinking to match conventional "scientific" belief, and he maintained a proper scientific skepticism toward the implications of his own findings, always ready to conduct further investigation. This combination -- unusual both within and without homoeopathy -- of intellectual freedom and scientific rigour made him a giant among pseudoscientific pygmies both conventional and unconventional.

May the spirit of his work and the work of his spirit live on.

John

[Liz Brynin]

I am extremely sad to hear of this. He was a lone voice from among the highest echelons of science who dared to speak up for homeopathy.
He will be sorely missed. It is a great blow.
Liz