Steve Webb

Background

Steve Webb was born and grew up at Swindon in Wiltshire.

Education

He studied at Imperial College London, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science (1st class honours) in 1970 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1973.

Career

He is currently Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Joint Department of Physics in the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital. The subject of his doctoral studies was cosmic-ray physics. Early on he worked in the field of Connecticut. Webb and his colleagues built a Connecticut scanner by cannibalizing a radioisotope scanner.

He then moved on to research in nuclear medicine, with one of the hospital"s first Positron Emission Tomography scanners (named MUPPET) housed in a freight container on a lorry in the car park.

Arguably, Webb"s most important work was on radiation therapy and included treatment planning and intensity-modulated and image-guided radiotherapies. In 1989 Webb published an important paper on radiotherapy treatment planning (Phys Medical Biol 34 1349) and went on to publish more than 150 papers on radiotherapy.

In 1996 Webb was granted a professorship at the Royal Marsden and two years later he became head of the Joint Department of Physics. As Editor-in-Chief of the journal Physics in Medicine & Biology, Webb has been the journal"s most published author

Webb retired in September 2011.

In September 2014.

Achievements

• In June 2012, at a ceremony in Strasbourg, France, Webb was awarded the EFOMP Meda EFOMP, the European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics, presents the medal in recognition of "an individual"s outstanding and internationally acknowledged contribution to the advancement of medical physics". In addition to receiving the award Professor Webb delivered a presentation entitled "New technology for image-guided radiation therapy and for IMRT delivery, including compensating for organ motion". Peter Sharp, the president of EFOMP, commented: "One of the roles of EFOMP is to recognize those scientists in Europe who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of medical physics. Many patients have benefited from Steve"s scientific work in radiotherapy physics. Generations of young physicists have been enthused by his teaching – particularly at the European School of Medical Physics that EFOMP supports – and his editorship of Physics in Medicine & Biology has raised the profile of the scientific contribution that physics makes to medicine. The Council of EFOMP was, therefore, unanimous in the view that the EFOMP medal should be awarded to Steve Webb." In September 2014 Professor Webb was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine in recognition of "outstanding contributions to radiotherapy physics, to teaching and to scientific publishing". Professor Stephen Keevil, President of the IPEM, said, "This is the highest honour that IPEM can bestow. We award Honorary Fellowships very sparingly, in recognition of those who have made a truly positive and lasting impact.".

Connections

colleague:

Robert Speller

Friend:

Royal Marsden Hospital