University of Washington Bioengineering Professor Gerald Pollack answers this question, and intrigues us to consider the implications of this finding. Not all water is H2O, a radical departure from what you may have learned from textbooks. Pollack received his PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. He then joined the University of Washington faculty and is now professor of Bioengineering.

His interests have ranged broadly, from biological motion and cell biology to the interaction of biological surfaces with aqueous solutions. His 1990 book, Muscles and Molecules: Uncovering the Principles of Biological Motion, won an “Excellence Award” from the Society for Technical Communication; his more recent book, Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life, won that Society’s “Distinguished Award.” Pollack received an honorary doctorate in 2002 from Ural State University in Ekaterinburg, Russia, and was more recently named an Honorary Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He received the Biomedical Engineering Society’s Distinguished Lecturer Award in 2002. In 2008, he was the faculty member selected by the University of Washington faculty to receive their highest annual distinction: the Faculty Lecturer Award. Pollack is a Founding Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and a Fellow of both the American Heart Association and the Biomedical Engineering Society. He is also Founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, WATER, and has recently received an NIH Transformative R01 Award.

He was the 2012 recipient of the Prigogine Medal and in 2013 published his new book: The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor.

The Waters of Heterodoxy:

A Review of Gerald Pollack’s “The Fourth Phase of Water”

In “The Fourth Phase of Water,” Gerald Pollack offers an elegant new theory of water chemistry that has profound implications not only for chemistry and biology, but for the metaphoric foundation of our understanding of reality and our treatment of nature.

Water – Blowing Biology Out of the Water

The Fourth Phase of Water:

Implications for Energy, Life, and Health

“The Fourth Phase of Water is one of the most important scientific discoveries in modern times. Can drinking water supply energy? Is water merely another kind of food? How does water relate to health? And, why don’t your joints squeak?

Answering these and related questions requires an understanding of the nature of water. Many presume that water must be completely understood, given its simplicity and pervasiveness through nature, but in fact precious little has been known about how water molecules organize themselves and interact with one another — until recently.

Students learn that water has three phases: solid, liquid and vapor. But there is something more: in our laboratory at the University of Washington we have uncovered a fourth phase. This phase occurs next to water loving (hydrophilic) surfaces. It is surprisingly extensive, projecting out from surfaces by up to millions of molecular layers. And it exists almost everywhere throughout nature, including your body. In fact, it fills your cells.

This newly identified phase of water has been described in a recent (2013) book: The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid and Vapor [1] www.ebnerandsons.com. The book documents the basic finding and presents many applications beyond the ones mentioned above. It also deals with water’s well-recognized anomalies, turning those anomalies into easily explained features.”

Pollack Laboratories Research

Uncovering nature’s deeply held secrets…