Introduction 



SCOPE 



Biophysics is today the youngest daughter of General Physiology, a sister 

 to Biochemistry and Pharmacology. The subject matter is not yet very well 

 defined, as the introduction to almost any of the recent essays on the subject 

 quickly attests. Although the basic skeleton is clear enough — it being the 

 engineering physicist's concept of a "system" suitably molded to describe 

 the living thing — it may be many years before the dust has settled on dis- 

 cussions of what appendages are proper to the skeletal framework of the 

 subject. 



Consider some of the pertinent disciplines in terms of Table 1. Biochem- 

 istry and biophysics attempt to describe and interpret the chemical and 

 physical processes of biological materials in terms of the principles of or- 

 ganic chemistry, physical chemistry, and physics. Biophysics is concerned 

 with questions about the physics of biological systems. It has the advantages 

 of less complexity and more certainty than the biological subjects, but has 

 the disadvantage of being limited to only specific aspects of the whole living 

 system. For the human being, biophysics can be thought of as providing a 

 description of his whole physical system from the particular view of physics. 

 For medical research, for the highest forms of medical specialization, and 

 for the general medical practitioner of the years to come, the requirement 

 seems inevitably to be a strong background and experience in the medical 

 arts, coupled with a thorough grounding in the scientific knowledge of medi- 

 cine and the scientific approach to it. The same is true of the biosciences. 



The scope of biophysics today is rather broad, if judged by the attitudes 

 of authors of papers in several of the current journals, and in various essays. 

 Yet the master, A. V. Hill, a Nobel prize winner who published his first 

 paper in 1910 and is still active in research and physiology, has cautioned 

 that the use of physical techniques or ideas alone for investigation of bio- 

 logical problems does not of itself make biophysics. He defines the subject 

 as: "the study of biological function, organization, and structure by physical 

 and physiochemical ideas and methods," and then hastens to emphasize 

 that he has put ideas first. He further expands* and drives home the key 

 point as follows: 



*From "Lectures on the Scientific Basis of Medicine," Vol. 4, Athlone Press, London, 

 1954-1955; reprinted inSdence, 124, 1233 (1956). 



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