APS News

June 2020 (Volume 29, Number 6)

FYI: Science Policy News from AIP

‘Physics of Living Systems’ Survey to Delineate New Subfield

By Adria Schwarber

The National Academies is currently undertaking the first-ever decadal survey of the “physics of living systems.” The study committee will review recent accomplishments of the field and identify emerging research directions, while also making the case for it being a true subdiscipline of physics, rather than a mere application of physics tools and techniques to biological phenomena.

At a town hall event in April, committee chair William Bialek, professor of physics at Princeton University, traced the evolution of how past surveys have treated research at the intersection of physics and biology.

FYI: Science Policy News from AIP

"If you go back to the early decadal surveys of physics, the interaction between the physics community and the phenomena of life was very clearly categorized as an application of physics to things outside the field,” he said. Although the physics of living systems gained recognition in the early 2000s, he added, discussion of its work was nevertheless scattered across the physics decadal surveys prepared for the 2010s, such as the reports on atomic, molecular, and optical physics and condensed matter physics.

“What's new in this cycle is that we're being asked to review the physics of living systems as a subfield of physics that stands on its own, along with elementary particle physics, condensed matter physics, astrophysics, nuclear physics, and so on,” he continued. “I think this is an incredibly exciting thing for our field. And we, as a community, have a great opportunity to sort of stake our claim to this part of physics and to the idea that what we do is firmly a part of physics.”

Notably, the National Science Foundation, which is sponsoring the survey, already has a “Physics of Living Systems” program that funds research at scales ranging from single-cell dynamics to the collective behavior of animal populations. However, the study’s statement of task does not define its scope based on that program. It more generally instructs the committee to consider ways NSF and other funding agencies could “overcome traditional boundaries” to support research on the physics of living systems.

Committee members have made clear, however, that the survey is not intended to cover the field of biophysics as it has generally been defined. Bialek noted that the study’s title refers jointly to “biological physics/physics of living systems,” which he said suggested that “even the people who are asking for advice are a little unsure about how to describe this enterprise.”

He also contrasted the types of research that are presented at meetings of the Biophysical Society versus those of the APS Division of Biological Physics. “I think many of us find fantastically interesting things in both programs, but if you look statistically, you'll see that those are very different cross sections through or rather different pieces of the field,” he said.

Speaking broadly about the evolution of the relationship between physics and biology, he said that around the turn of this century, “it became clear that if you came from the physics community and were interested in the phenomena of the living world, then you could still be a physicist, as judged by your physics colleagues.”

“And so there is a distinction between biophysics as a branch of biology and the physics of biological systems or the physics of living systems as a branch of physics, and we are in a very deliberate sense charged with studying the latter,” he added.

The author is a science policy analyst for FYI.

Published by the American Institute of Physics since 1989, FYI is a trusted source of science policy news that is read by congressional staff, federal agency heads, and leading figures in the scientific community. Sign up for free FYI emails at aip.org/fyi

©1995 - 2024, AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY
APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed.

Editor: David Voss
Staff Science Writer: Leah Poffenberger
Contributing Correspondent: Alaina G. Levine
Publication Designer and Production: Nancy Bennett-Karasik

June 2020 (Volume 29, Number 6)

APS News Home

Issue Table of Contents

APS News Archives

Contact APS News Editor


Articles in this Issue
APS President Sends Letter to House Science Committee Regarding COVID-19 Policy Initiatives
The APS Forum on Education
Physicists Mobilize to Combat Coronavirus
Exploring the Cosmos with Nobel Laureates
Going Deep into Black Holes
Supporting Early Career Physicists Virtually
New Webinar Series for Students and Early Career Members
Education and Diversity News
This Month in Physics History
International Affairs
Office of Government Affairs
FYI: Science Policy News from AIP
The Back Page