Preface xi
and techniques discussed. To aid revision, several
exam-style questions are also included at the end of
each chapter, pitched at a general audience that can
consist of readers with a background in either physical
or life sciences. Solved exercises are also used and are
associated with worked case examples in which study
questions are solved in clearly defined steps. Summary
bullet points are also used at the end of each chapter to
summarize the key concepts.
The writing of this book went through several
iterations, not least in part due to the several anonymous
expert reviews that came my way, courtesy of Francesca
McGowan at Taylor & Francis Group. I am indebted to
her and her team, and to the anonymous reviewers who
invested their valuable time to improve this textbook.
Also, I am indebted to several of my students and aca
demic peers who generated a range of valuable feedback
from their own areas of expertise, whether wittingly or
otherwise. These include Pietro Cicuta, Jeremy Cravens,
Domi Evans, Ramin Golestanian, Sarah Harris, Jamie
Hobbs, Tim Newmann, Michelle Peckham, Carlos
Penedo, Ehmke Pohl, Steve Quinn, Jack “Emergency
Replacement Richard” Shepherd, Christian Soeller, and
Peter Weightman.
Also, I extend my gratitude to the past and present
committee members of the British Biophysics Society
(BBS), the Biological Physics Group (BPG) of the Institute
of Physics (UK), and the Light Microscopy section of the
Royal Microscopical Society (RMS), who have all been
enormously supportive. A special thanks goes to the
members of the steering group of the UK Physics of Life
network (PoLNET), and to its wider members of over
1,000 researchers in this wonderful field of science - your
creativity and passion make the community the envy of
nations. And of course, to my dear late colleague and
friend Tom McLeish. You left a tough act for me to follow
as Chair of PoLNET, and I feel blessed for having known
you... there is, as you know, no such thing as a dumb
question.
Special thanks also go to the other members of my own
research team who, although not being burdened with
generating feedback on the text of this book, were at least
generous enough to be patient with me while I finished
writing it, including Erik “The Viking” Hedlund, Helen
“The Keeper of the Best Lab Books Including a Table
of Contents” Miller, Adam “Lens Cap” Wollman, and
Zhaokun “Jack” Zhou.
Finally, you should remember that this emergent field
of interfacial physical/life science research is not only
powerful but genuinely exciting and fun, and it is my
hope that this book will help to shine some light on this
highly fertile area of science, and in doing so captivate
your senses and imagination and perhaps help this field
to grow further still.
Perhaps the most important fact that the reader should
bear in mind is that the use of physical science methods
and concepts to address biological questions is genuinely
motivated by ignorance; biophysical enquiry is not a box-
ticking exercise to confirm what we already know, but rather
it facilitates a genuinely new scientific insight. It allows us not
only to address the how, but more importantly is driven by
the most important word in science—why?
The most important words in science are “we
don’t know.”
There is no such thing as a stupid question, only fools
too proud to ask them.
Additional material is available from the CRC Press
website: www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/978149870
2430.
Professor Mark C. Leake
Building Bridges and removing barriers. Not just
`decorating the boundaries’.
University of York, York, United Kingdom