OrthoDoc

Before I entered medical college I was in love with physics. I was introduced to the intricacies of the physical world by my teacher and guru Mr SNP. The man was quite different from others and he made physics very interesting. In my exams I even scored more in physics than in biology. However medicine came up in between and we had to part ways. When I ended up specialising in Orthopaedics I couldn’t thank God more! I never intended to be mending bones but then as fate would have it, it was back to physics.

I was interacting with wikibookians over an issue when I chanced upon Jean-Pierre Petit in a note made by Xavier in Wikibooks. JPP was from France, and is a scientist by profession. I think the word maverick would describe him nicely. He is into physics and has written several books on various topics. He has been in some controversy over some contentious issues. Read about them in wikipedia.The more interesting bit is that many of the books he has authored are actually comics!! The french have always been famous for their comics. Tintin and Asterix have always been on the top of my list. So why not have science comics? JPP has elaborated on several such topics through the eyes of a character, Archie. On a pesonal level, since my interest in Physics is not academic but only personal, this unconventional method of learning made for some out-of-the-ordinary reading. I have not gone through all of them but the ones that I read were indeed interesting. Suddenly lot of physics was becoming clear to me.

Several of these comics have been around in the market for many years now. But recently his contract with his publishers expired and he decided it was time to do something with them. He put them up in a server for all the rest of us to download. Since they were in french they needed some translation to do. Most of the comics are translated into several languages.
The English PDF versions have been done by John Murphy and are available for download at another site, savoir-sans-frontieres or knowledge without borders. They are available to everyone completely free of cost. If anyone is intersted in translating the comics they are most welcome to contact him. His id is provided at the site. The textless versions are also available for download.

This raises two issues to my mind.

1. There is a lot of activity in the non-english speaking communities that we are never exposed to. And because pictures make words redundant comics are one of the best means of exchanging ideas among two language distinct communities. I strongly believe that we need to open more channels of exchange in order for us to progress ahead
2. Secondly it is intersting to note how the web has enabled JPP to reach out to a more wider audience than he has had until now. The community has literally done all of the translation. The web has done something that his publishers could not do all these years. Cost of production has become irrelevant in this medium. Money is no longer a barrier to the spread of knowledge and this excites me a lot.

Of late there have been several endeavours to achieve dissemination of knowledge free of cost, Wikibooks being the most notable among them. However, I do not know how many of these will sustain long enough to produce products worthy of mentioning. Only time will tell!

Tags: Science Comics, Jean-Pierre Petit, Savoir-sans-frontiers