Course Identification

Seminal Papers in Physics of Soft Matter and Living Systems

This course will go through, in depth, a broad range of seminal papers that had major impact on the fields of soft condensed matter and biophysics. In particular, we will cover the following works:

- Physics of chemoreception (Berg)

- Kinetic Proofreading: A New Mechanism for Reducing Errors in Biosynthetic Processes Requiring High Specificity (Hopfield)

- Mutations of bacteria from virus sensitivity to virus resistance (Luria & Delbruck)

- Life at low Reynolds number (Purcell)

- The topological theory of defects in ordered media (Mermin)

- The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis (Turing)

- Novel type of phase transition in a system of self-driven particles (Vicsek et al.)

Students will be familiar with key papers, concepts and ideas in the physics of soft matter and the physics of living systems. Students will see applications of various tools in physics and mathematics, including statistical physics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, probability theory, differential geometry and more. Students will develop intuition for the use of mathematical and physical models for fundamental applications, and will and get hands-on experience with the problems studied via the weekly assignments and tutorials.

See syllabus.