Related papers: When physics meets biology: a less known Feynman
Over the past 50 years, the use of mathematical models, derived from physical reasoning, to describe molecular and cellular systems has evolved from an art of the few to a cornerstone of biological inquiry. George Oster stood out as a…
Jerzy Neyman's life history and some of his contributions to applied statistics are reviewed. In a 1960 article he wrote: ``Currently in the period of dynamic indeterminism in science, there is hardly a serious piece of research which, if…
This is a pedagogical introduction to Brownian motion on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Einstein's 1905 paper on the subject. After briefly reviewing Einstein's work in its contemporary context, we pursue some lines of further…
This Special Issue of Biomolecules, commissioned in honor of Dr. Philip E. Bourne, focuses on a new field of biomolecular data science. In this brief retrospective, we consider the arc of Bourne's 40-year scientific and professional career,…
We review the famous no-hidden-variables theorem in John von Neumann's 1932 book on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics. We describe the notorious gap in von Neumann's argument, pointed out by Grete Hermann in 1935 and, more…
Steven Weinberg was a giant of late 20th Century physics on whose shoulders we stand while groping for the science of the 21st Century. This article provides a too-brief summary of a selection of his many achievements -- eight decades of…
Population genetics lies at the heart of evolutionary theory. This topic forms part of many biological science curricula but is rarely taught to physics students. Since physicists are becoming increasingly interested in biological…
A brief account of interesting moments in the genesis of the quark paradigm is presented.
During his last year of life Feynman became interested in integrable models. In the course of his study of one dimensional particles with inverse square-type potentials (the Calogero class of models) he came up with a field theory-inspired…
Embryogenesis, the process by which an organism forms and develops, has long been and still is a major field of investigation in the natural sciences. By which means, which forces, are embryonic cells and tissues assembled, deformed, and…
In this paper I describe the early development of the so-called mathematical biophysics, as conceived by Nicolas Rashevsky back in the 1920's, as well as his latter idealization of a "relational biology". I also underline that the creation…
This paper is mostly a collection of ideas already published by various authors, some of them even a long time ago. Its intention is to bring the reader to know some rather unknown papers of different fields that merit interest and to show…
Schroedinger's book 'What is Life?' is widely credited for having played a crucial role in development of molecular and cellular biology. My essay revisits the issues raised by this book from the modern perspective of epigenetics and…
Feynman's light microscope invites us to reconsider what we thought we knew about quantum reality. Rather than invoking wavefunction collapse to predict the loss of fringes in a monitored interferometer, Feynman analyzes the problem in…
This paper gives a short review of the history of statistical physics starting from D. Bernoulli's kinetic theory of gases in the 18th century until the recent new developments in nonequilibrium kinetic theory in the last decades of this…
In 1917 F. Klein proposed his work on projective geometry to A. Einstein for further developments of general relativity. Klein had a peculiar way to consider the relationship between mathematics and physics, based on his Erlanger Programm…
Life at Caltech with Murray Gell-Mann in the early 1960's is remembered. Our different paths to quarks, leading to different views of their reality, are described.
Although he was the recipient of a Nobel Prize and despite the greatness of his accomplishments, Julian Schwinger is almost an unsung hero of our age . He is relatively unknown to the general population, even though in the physics community…
Teaching physics to biologists requires far more than making the course for engineers mathematically less rigorous and adding in a few superficial biological problems. What is needed is for physicists to work closely with biologists to…
The article is a recollection of the memorable experience of attending a course on Quantum Mechanics given by Feynman in Brasil, as well as several meetings and exchanges Daniele Amati and I had with him over many years, in both the U.S.…