The Universe Inside You - Brian Clegg

The Extreme Science of the Human Body From Quantum Theory to the Mysteries of the Brain
Built from the debris of exploding stars that floated through space for billions of years, home to a zoo of tiny aliens, and controlled by a brain with more possible connections than there are atoms in the universe, the human body is the most incredible thing in existence.
In the sequel to his best-selling Inflight Science, Brian Clegg offers a spectacular tour through the human body.
He explores mitochondria, in-cell powerhouses once separate creatures; 
how your eyes consume million-year-old photons of light;
your many senses, which include the ability to detect warps in space and time; and why meeting an attractive person can turn you into a gibbering idiot.

Read The Universe Inside You and you'll never look at yourself the same way again.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ]  

Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.7 out of 5 (171 Ratings, 19 Reviews)

My Rating:  3 out of 5. 


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Mathematics of Life: Unlocking the Secrets of Existence

Author:       Ian Stewart
Published:  2011
Publisher:  Profile Books Ltd.
Hardcover: 368 pages


 I remember my high school days in late seventies, when the students who wanted to join the science stream but were not confident about their mathematical abilities would choose PCB (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) instead of PCM (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics)  as their subjects. 
Seems like this escape from mathematics is no longer an option in twenty-first century !

Many of the important questions opened up by modern discoveries in biology cannot be answered without significantly drawing upon the knowledge of mathematics.
Therefore in the present times biologists and mathematicians are collaborating on finding solutions to such questions especially those related to nature and origins of life itself.
The former pose the biological questions or describe a set of experiments, while the later develop a mathematical models to simulate them.

Welcome to the field of Mathematical Biology ! This book is a layman's primer on this subject.

It explores several connections between mathematics and biology, viz; -  the Human Genome Project; the structure and function of the complex molecules that coordinate the complex process of life; the shape of viruses; the organization of cells; the form and behavior of entire organisms and their interaction in the global ecosystem; evolutionary games that led to huge diversity of life in earth; the workings of the nervous system and the brain; nature of life; possibility of alien life forms.
The theory behind these connections encompass a wide range of mathematical concepts - probability, dynamics, chaos theory, symmetry, networks, mechanics, elasticity, knot theory.

While I don't claim to have understood each and every topic discussed in this book, I found it a really interesting read and would recommend it to anyone who is a keen reader of  popular science genre.
 Pythagoras the renowned mathematician of ancient Greece once said,"All things are numbers".  Ian Stewart, the author of this book and a mathematician of the modern era  has shown that this statement is true to a great extent in life forms.

Links:

• Goodreads Rating - 3.46 out of  5   (112 ratings)
• Review in The Guardian
•  "What is Mathematical Biology and How Useful Is It ?", Avner Friedman, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, August 2010, Volume 57, Number 7 - A technical paper (lots of differential equations !) that discusses application of mathematics in studying wounds, spread of cancer cells, reconstructive microsurgery, lung infection.

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