A new book by Ridgway Scott and Ariel Fernandez is coming out. Its title “A Mathematical Approach to Protein Biophysics” (Springer, 2017) feels unusual at first. Why do we need a mathematical approach to understand proteins? Perhaps we need to be reminded that the major problems in molecular biophysics, such as the protein folding problem, have remained open because they demand a level of intellectual maturity that is not yet commonly found in the biological sciences and can be provided by applied math. And yet, few applied mathematicians have managed to say some relevant to biology partly because, rather than trying to find out how nature did it, they try to tell nature how to do it. Here I am referring specifically to the protein folding problem, whose first-principle solution was finally published by Ariel Fernandez in 2016 (Physics at the Biomolecular Interface, Chapter 3). When we think carefully about these monumental challenges, the need to engage mathematicians in the development of molecular biophysics hardly needs justification. The new book by Ridgway Scott and Ariel Fernandez fulfills the need admirably, serving as a mathematician’s introduction to protein biophysics.

 

The publication particulars are:

Title: A Mathematical Approach to Protein Biophysics

Authors: L. Ridgway Scott, Ariel Fernández

Publisher: Springer International Publishing AG, CH

Pages: 284

Year: 2017

Price: 69.99 US dollars

Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-66031-8

Series Title: Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering

Topics: Mathematical and Computational Biology