Customer Reviews

Molecular and Cellular Biophysics

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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This book is aimed at providing the advanced undergraduate student or beginning graduate student a solid foundation in the basic concepts of molecular and cellular biophysics. I would suggest that this course be given prerequisites in physical chemistry and a very solid math background.

To cover the math background the author has added six appendicies to the book covering: expansions and series, matrix algebra, Fourier analysis, gaussian integrals, hyperbolic functions, polar and spherical coordinates. All of this is covered in only 16 pages. You would have to be a lot better than I was to learn Fourier analysis in only four pages. In undergraduate school I had full semester course in Fourier analysis, and it was by no means the first math class that I took. Perhaps I was just slower than today's students. But in my mind learning all this math from the appendicies while studing the rest of the material in this book would be asking a lot of an undergraduate student.

More important than the math, the author says, is having some knowledge of physical chemistry to include thermodynamics, kinetics, and statistical mechanics. And finally he assumes that the student has had some exposure to biochemistry.

Having gotten that out of the way, the central theme of the book is of course what it says in the title. This is an excellent and very inclusive text. The author ranges far and wide to bring up as many different aspects of biophysics as possible. It is very current in its coverage of material on subjects not found in other texts.

This is a well written text book for students and researchers teaching basic concepts of biophysics. Especially biological membranes are dealed with comprehensively. The figures are easy to understand and the price is rather low. Actually it is the best book of this kind I encountered. It can be highly recommended.

I am doing research in biophysics and wanted a book that I could use as a review in my spare time. The book refreshed me on topics outside my immediate research area. This is useful because sometimes ideas for my research come from other sources. I enjoyed reviewing topics I already saw in my graduate classes years ago. I also learned a few new things as this book went into greater detail. I liked how it has problems at the end of each chapter. However I could not check my progress as there is no answer key. I think it would make a good senior level undergraduate text or a first year graduate text.