PREFACE 



Biology has made extensive use of many instruments and methods developed 

 in the physical sciences. In recent years certain biological fields have been able 

 to make increasing use of and have developed mathematical methods for their 

 special purposes. Perhaps the reason this has not occurred earlier is that 

 sufficiently simple and important systems or situations do not present themselves 

 in biology. The life sciences, therefore, have developed most of their theoretical 

 structure without mathematics playing a leading role. Nevertheless, the need 

 for mathematical methods in biology has long been felt, as the pioneering work 

 of Fisher, Haldane, Wright, and others, has emphasized. 



The possibility that the life sciences could develop mathematical systems 

 suitably their own, so that this form of research could be added to the already 

 powerful research tools available, was the common denominator in this sym- 

 posium. In order to address ourselves to a single task, the principal emphasis 

 was on information theory. The reader will note that in several papers there 

 is, willy-nilly, a reference or two to the ideas of cybernetics. Perhaps this 

 presages a greater influence in biology of this mathematical sibling of information 

 theory. 



Our symposium and this book owe a debt to the pioneering effort oi 

 Henry Quastler and the book he edited in 1952 entitled Information Theory 

 in Biology. Among the newcomers to the fields of biology in which information 

 theory has found an application since 1952 is radiobiology. Since radiation 

 is an excellent way of introducing noise, the force of information theoretic 

 ideas may well be effective in achieving a better understanding of radiobiologic 

 problems in the future. By the same token, health physics will benefit by an 

 appreciation of the relation between radiation damage and aging. 



Our book is about a mathematical theory but it is also a book about 

 experimental biology. This is properly so, for the development of clear ideas 

 about nature is as much a part of science as any activity carried on in the 

 laboratory. Experiment and theory do their best work in double harness. 

 It should be understood that, although something has been done here to bring 

 earlier work up to date and to-present new material, much remains to be done. 

 The information theory point of view suggests many problems of both a 

 theoretical and an experimental character. We hope that good advantage 

 will be taken of this fact. 



The conference was entitled A Symposium on Information Theory in Health 

 Physics and Radiobiology and was held in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, 29-31 October 

 1956. The articles composing this volume were written in the ensuing months 

 and so represent the authors' results and opinions after the contact with his 

 confreres. As a result of this collocution some of the authors contributed 

 additional papers not given at the symposium. 



The symposium could not have been carried through without the labor 

 and good judgment of the other editors. Professor Robert L. Platzman and 

 Dr Henry Quastler. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the encouragement of 



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