So Simple a Beginning: How Four Physical Principles Shape Our Living World
By Raghuveer Parthasarathy, Alec and Kay Keith Professor, Physics
December 6, 2022
The form and function of a sprinting cheetah are quite unlike those of a rooted tree. A human being is very different from a bacterium or a zebra. The living world is a realm of dazzling variety, yet a shared set of physical principles shapes the forms and behaviors of every creature in it. So Simple a Beginning shows how the emerging new science of biophysics is transforming our understanding of life on Earth and enabling potentially lifesaving but controversial technologies such as gene editing, artificial organ growth, and ecosystem engineering. Excerpts and other content include individual chapters, the introduction and blurbs, Parthasarathy's description, an Amazon purchase option, and Parthasarathy's virtual science book talk through Harvard University.