April 15, 2011
In the past, students who loved science but hated math studied biology. That won't work today, writes the prolific emeritus professor of Mathematics at Britain's Warwick University, who explains why in his usual enthusiastic but definitely not dumbed-down style.
Physical scientists joked about biologists as "stamp collectors," and this was not far off until Victorian times, as they happily occupied themselves discovering and describing living things. By 1850, botanists counting flower petals wondered why they almost always came up with 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55—the well-known series called Fibonacci numbers. Mystical speculation abounded until 20th-century research proved that the dynamics of growing plants forces cells into specific mathematical relationships. Having dipped the reader's toe into his specialty, Stewart (Cows in the Maze: And Other Mathematical Explorations, 2010, etc.) proceeds to deliver a history of biology followed by a tour of current research. A fine chapter on Darwin and evolution contains almost no mathematics. The story of genetics, all the way up to the Human Genome Project, demands grade-school arithmetic to understand Mendel's rules of heredity. Readers with painful memories of high-school algebra will feel reassured because Stewart accessibly explains population growth, speciation, brain function, chaos and game theory, networking, symmetry and even the mechanism that produces animal stripes and spots. The lack of equations does not imply simplicity, however; all chapters begin with basics, but readers without a scientific background will struggle to finish more than one.
An ingenious overview of biology with emphasis on mathematical ideas—stimulating but requiring careful reading despite the lack of equations.
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May 15, 2011
When cutting-edge biologists begin explaining the stripes on angelfish and the growth of cacti not through dissection and diagrams but, rather, through mathematical formulas, Stewart recognizes the emergence of a new scientific paradigmand he invites readers to join him in exploring its exciting possibilities. Illuminating the principles driving this paradigm, Stewart looks over the shoulders of scientists applying mathematical analysis not only to angelfish and cacti but also to Martian bacteria and human brains. Even the origins of life are coming in for fresh scrutiny from mathematically equipped researchers. Though a complete understanding of how mathematics pries secrets out of nature requires long and rigorous study, Stewart conveys to general readers the fundamental axioms with lucidly accessible writing, supplemented with helpful charts and illustrations. Although readers may shrink from the difficulties of mastering, say, the Hodgkin-Huxley equations describing electrochemical reactions in nerve cells, Stewart can still convey the illuminating insights into what these equations reveal about how the nerve signals travel. A rewarding adventure for the armchair scientist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)