From Kuru to Nucleation, Aggregation, Polymerization and Crystallization in Biology and Medicine

Nucleation is a word derived from nuclear family and refers to the concept of pro- genitor, the mother and the father of any family, which has been at the root of human life for many thousands of years. From it has emerged the concept of a breeding line of humans. Only in the last few centuries of civilization have physicists borrowed the word, and later biologists for Schwann's cell theory. Very recently it has passed to atomic theory, spectroscopy, radioactivity and to atomic bombs, fission and fusion. In physics any change in the free energy state of matter involves a nucleation or ordering of atoms into a new pattern as in any change to gas, liquid or solid or in the packing of atoms in carbon black, graphite, or diamond. Thus the word nucle- ation is not derived from atomic physics or cell biology. To be so deluded makes it difficult to understand the simple matter of pattern setting in any change of state.