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MIT Physics Lecture Series:j The Biophysical Borderline: Exploring the Boundary Between Inanimate and Living Matter
Professor Jeremy England
Fri Feb 3, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
Living things are good at collecting information about their surroundings, and at putting that information to use through the ways they interact with their environment so as to survive and replicate themselves. Thus, talking about biology inevitably leads to talking about decision, purpose, and function. At the same time, living things are also made of atoms that, in and of themselves, have no particular function. Rather, molecules and the atoms from which they are built exhibit well-defined physical properties having to do with how they bounce off of, stick to, and combine with each other across space and over time. Making sense of life at the molecular level is all about building a bridge between these two different ways of looking at the world. In this lecture we will discuss the ways in which a deep understanding of statistical physics can help to illuminate the inner workings of biological systems.
Contact: Denise Wahkor, 4-315, 253-4855, denisew@mit.edu
Sponsor: Physics
Latest update: 09-Dec-2011
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