Robert Austin

Princeton University

What Biology can do for Physics

The physicist Stan Ulam once paraphrased Jack Kennedy and said:  "Ask not what physics can do for biology, ask what biology can do for physics".  This isn't a popular thing to say in the present climate of biotechnology and specifically targeted funding: is it possible that biology can actually teach us "new" physics?  I won't succeed, but I will try to give some examples where I believe that biology does have something to give to physics.  I am sure in the future this will become more the case, since I believe there are many mysteries in biology that we are far from understanding at a basic level because of a lack of physics understanding.