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Theoretical biology is a field of academic study and research that involves the use of quantitative tools in biology.
Many separate areas of biology fall under the concept of theoretical biology, according to the way they are studied. Some of these areas include: animal behaviour (ethology), biomechanics, biorhythms, cell biology, complexity of biological systems, ecology, enzyme kinetics, evolutionary biology, genetics, immunology, membrane transport, microbiology, molecular structures, morphogenesis, physiological mechanisms, systems biology and the origin of life. Neurobiology is an example of a subdiscipline of biology which already has a theoretical version of its own, theoretical or computational neuroscience.
The ultimate goal of the theoretical biologist is to explain the biological world using mainly mathematical and computational tools, though not necessarily. Though it is ultimately based on observations and experimental results, the theoretical biologist's product is a model or theory, and it is this that chiefly distinguishes the theoretical biologist from other biologists. Over recent years the theoretical biologist has become nearly obsolete, as tests prove the impossibility of accurate results where the environment of the observations is not homogeneous.
Theoretical biologists
- D'Arcy Thompson
- Brian Goodwin
- Lewis Wolpert
- Robert May
- Michael Hassell
- Bryan Grenfell
- C. H. Waddington
- Richard Lewontin
- J. B. S. Haldane
- Rene Thom
- Christopher Zeeman
- Jack Cowan
- John Maynard Smith
- Stuart Kauffman
- James D. Murray
- Erik Rauch
- Nicholas Rashevsky
- Robert Rosen
- Peter Schuster
- Arthur Winfree
- Francisco Varela
See also
- Journal of Theoretical Biology
- Bioinformatics
- Mathematical biology
- Theoretical ecology
- Theoretical population genetics
Bibliographical references
- Bonner, J. T. 1988. The Evolution of Complexity by Means of Natural Selection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Hertel, H. 1963. Structure, Form, Movement. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corp.
- Mangel, M. 1990. Special Issue, Classics of Theoretical Biology (part 1). Bull. Math. Biol. 52(1/2): 1-318.
- Prusinkiewicz, P. & Lindenmeyer, A. 1990. The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
- Thompson, D.W. 1942. On Growth and Form. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2. vols.
- Vogel, S. 1988. Life's Devices: The Physical World of Animals and Plants. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
External links
Journals
Related societies
- American Mathematical Society
- British Society of Developmental Biology
- European Mathematical Society
- ESMTB: European Society for Mathematical and Theoretical Biology
- The International Biometric Society
- International Society for Ecological Modelling
- The Israeli Society for Theoretical and Mathematical Biology
- London Mathematical Society
- Société Francophone de Biologie Théorique
- Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
- Society for Mathematical Biology
Theoretical biology | Applied mathematics | Bioinformatics | Biology | Statistics | Mathematical biology
"Theoretical biology"