It really is my pleasure to be here and talk with you because I think that the future of my field is really your field. Those of you here will really be the ones who determine what we in the medical field can do, and how much of what we can do will be the discussion we'll have in the future. I'd like to speak a little bit about something that's been dear to my heart for about 20 years now and that is the development of a total artificial heart. I brought this picture (Figure 1) of the Jarvik, the J-7 100 heart, to show you an example. It is basically a polyurethane rigid casing and polyurethane diaphragm. The diaphragm has four layers … with graphite between them. The movable pumping diaphragm is nondistensible so the walls never touch the outer casing, which is necessary to prevent destruction of blood. There are four clinical-grade valves….. This is a very simple basic device.

The idea of the artificial heart first came from Charles Lindbergh. Shortly after coming back from his trans-Atlantic flight, he was told his aunt was dying from aortic stenosis. The doctor said that if there was some way they could actually stop the heart or bypass the heart … long enough to fix the valve, she could live.

The March meeting of the American Physical Society was held in New Orleans, March 21-25, 1988. The primary forum for APS's Division of Condensed Matter Physics, the meeting occupied the entire five days with sessions begining at 8:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 2:30 p.m. Special sessions ran during dinner hours and some technical topics required evening sessions as well. According to the meeting program (an 8.5 × 11 inch book not quite 1.5 inches thick), 340 invited and 3,420 contributed abstracts were scheduled into 392 sessions. A gargantuan event to say the least. Meeting rooms were full to over-flowing for many sessions with the hottest, most pervasive topic of the week being high temperature superconductors.

Formed just three years ago, the Materials Physics Topical Group (MPTG) of the American Physical Society is thriving. At the meeting, the MPTG fielded 15 topically focused symposia comprising about 50 sessions ranging from quasicrystals to high temperature superconductors. Both invited and contributed sessions were included (the latter often featuring an invited lead-off talk). The sessions were developed through the efforts of symposium organizers in a manner not dissimilar to the way MRS symposia are run. Although there is overlap between MPTG programs and some areas treated by the APS's Condensed Matter Physics Division (CMP), this style of symposium organization is unique to MPTG.