How much physics is needed for Bialek's Biophysics book?

[duodenum]

TL;DR Summary

How much physics one should know in order to go through William Bialek's book Biophysics: Searching for Principles?

Hello,

I am originally a medical doctor and now doing a PhD in neuroscience. I have no formal physics / math training beyond high school level but I self-studied single variable and multivariable calculus as well as differential equations from MIT's OCW website, did examples, exams etc. I also have a bit of linear algebra knowledge and strong programming skills (particularly in scientific computing, solving differential equations, writing models etc.) if it helps. I am deeply impressed by William Bialek's work on maximum entropy models of neural activity and would like to go as deep as possible along this direction. I have found that he has a textbook: Biophysics: Searching for Principles (https://www.amazon.ca/Biophysics-Searching-Principles-William-Bialek/dp/0691138915) and would like to study the chapters especially related to Ising model and how it relates to neural activity.

Of course, at this point in my life studying all of the physics is not realistic at all even though it was my high school dream, but still I would like to try my chance at grasping this biophysics book in the hopes of making a small contribution to the field. Over the last two years, I covered sections from University Physics by Young and Freedman and almost finished An Introduction to Thermal Physics by Daniel Schroder. My question is, if anyone else read that book, how much and what areas of physics should I know before attempting to start it? And what resources would you recommend?

Thanks in advance.

 

[gleem]

The book is a graduate-level book for physicists. According to one review, it draws on a background of statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and information theory. It is not clear how much quantum mechanics is used but it would seem to me that there would be appreciably more statistical mechanics and information theory (not a usual physics course).

I found a table of contents for the book which you might find useful in deciding if to buy. Sorry about the format but that is the way it was presented.

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Table of Contents​

Acknowledgments ix PART I EXPLORING THE PHENOMENA 1. Introduction 3 *1.1 About Our Subject 3 *1.2 About This Book 11 2. Photon Counting in Vision 17 *2.1 A First Look 17 *2.2 Dynamics of Single Molecules 51 *2.3 Biochemical Amplification 68 *2.4 The First Synapse and Beyond 97 *2.5 Coda 115 3. Lessons, Problems, Principles 117 PART II CANDIDATE PRINCIPLES 4. Noise Is Not Negligible 127 *4.1 Fluctuations and Chemical Reactions 127 *4.2 Motility and Chemotaxis in Bacteria 149 *4.3 Molecule Counting, More Generally 172 *4.4 More about Noise in Perception 192 *4.5 Proofreading and Active Noise Reduction 218 *4.6 Perspectives 245 5. No Fine Tuning 247 *5.1 Sequence Ensembles 248 *5.2 Ion Channels and Neuronal Dynamics 279 *5.3 The States of Cells 299 *5.4 Long Time Scales in Neural Networks 329 *5.5 Perspectives 349 6. Efficient Representation 353 *6.1 Entropy and Information 354 *6.2 Noise and Information Flow 369 *6.3 Does Biology Care about Bits? 395 *6.4 Optimizing Information Flow 421 *6.5 Gathering Information and Making Models 449 *6.6 Perspectives 467 7. Outlook 469 Appendix Some Further Topics 473 * A.1 Poisson Processes 473 * A.2 Correlations, Power Spectra, and All That 484 * A.3 Diffraction and Biomolecular Structure 495 * A.4 Electronic Transitions in Large Molecules 503 * A.5 The Kramers Problem 512 * A.6 Berg and Purcell, Revisited 521 * A.7 Maximum Entropy 533 * A.8 Measuring Information Transmission 545 Annotated Bibliography 557 Index 625

 

[Frabjous]

I glanced at the book. It is a physics book. I would say that it requires physics sophistication, not necessarily a ton of physics. The issue is that physics sophistication is generally acquired by doing a ton of physics. Have you considered emailing the author directly with your question? He has taught the course to non-physicists and would probably be best able to judge the appropriateness of your background.

 

[duodenum]

Thanks for the answers, I emailed the author and will share his response if he responds.

 

[jhewitt123]

Don't read it. I read Bialek's threshold of hearing nonsense that made him famous when I was in college back in the eighties I think. Keep doing what you are doing and don;t worry about him. He is smart, but not that smart.