The importance of mathematics in Biology

Of late, I’ve been reading on the internet that Mathematics is going to become one of the major tool to help virtually any science field. It even is being applied to humanities. I wonder how it will help biology.

Basically, maths helps in modelling. Modelling in a sense that using maths we can construct models of the processes. After a model has been built, we may do many things with it. One example might be to use that model for predictions or use the model for optimise certain process.

Now, as we are progressing towards convergence of biology with other fields such as information science, nanotechnology, etc., the models of biological processes will become indispensable. In the future, more and more biology work such as genetic circuit design, population modelling, etc. will be done on the computer. And the software on the computer will be designed using maths. So, in near future, a biologist with mathematical skills will be in great demand and will be in much better position to do inter-disiplinary research than his counterparts.

I have decided to buy and read the book ‘Nonlinear dynamics & chaos by Steven H. Strogatz’. It is an excellent book and I expect to learn a lot from that book.

RESOURCES

1. Math will rock the World.
2. Why Math in Synthetic Bio?

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1 comment

  1. Thanks for pointing the link. It is really thought-provoking and can teach us (biologists) a lesson or two.

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