  From the late 1960s and onwards the groups of Barry Ninham and Adrian
Parsegian, and their many collaborators, made a number of important
contributions to theory and experiment of intermolecular forces. In particular,
they explored the semi-classical theory: Maxwell's equations and Planck
quantization of light $\rightarrow$ Lifshitz and Casimir interactions. We
discuss some selected thought-provoking results from Ninham and his group. Some
of the results have been conceived as controversial but, we dare, say never
uninteresting.
