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The early development of medical physics as a separate discipline and profession is briefly reviewed. Although both x rays and radioactivity were discovered by physicists, at first the physical investigations of these phenomena, and their medical applications, proceeded along parallel but independent lines. Radiological journals were founded in Britain, Germany, and the U.S. as early as 1896-1897 but it was not until ten years later that papers on radiation physics began to appear regularly. In 1913 the first full-time physicists were appointed to posts in medical schools and hospitals: William Duane in the U.S. and Sydney Russ in Britain. Thereafter the number of physicists engaged in medical applications increased slowly but steadily, and in the 1920s they began to apply the new science of radiation dosimetry to both x ray and radium therapy. The "Hospital Physicists' Association" was founded in Britain in 1943 with 53 members and the "American Association of Physicists in Medicine" followed in 1958 with 127 charter members.