A century ago, the publication of D’Arcy Thompson’s classic “On growth and form” laid out his vision to look at form from a mathematical and physical perspective, a view that has finally begun to permeate into the fabric of modern biology. Motivated by biological observations of multi-scale organization in plants and animals, I will show how a combination of biological and physical experiments, with theory and computations allow us to begin unraveling the physical basis for morphogenesis in molecular assemblies, cells and tissues, and thus start to understand the biophysical basis for the diversity of living form that led Darwin to exclaim ” it is enough to drive the sanest man mad”.
Biography: L. Mahadevan spent his undergraduate years at IIT-Madras, India, and obtained his PhD at Stanford University, CA. He started his independent career at MIT, and following that was the inaugural Schlumberger Professor of Complex Physical Systems in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Trinity.
At Harvard University since 2003, he is currently the England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Physics. His interests center around using experiment and theory to understand the patterns of shape, flow and motion in living and nonliving matter, particularly at the everyday observable scale. He is a MacArthur Fellow, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
Tea after the talk at 4:30 in Sloane Physics Lab 3rd Floor Lounge
Host: R. Shankar