Mathematics, Biology, and Physics: Interactions and Interdependence, Volume 52, Number 8

832 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 52, NUMBER 8 Introduction Modern science has a solid conceptual framework and considers experimental results as the ultimate litmus test against which to validate any theoretical construct. Its birth can be traced back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The work of people like Nicholaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, William Harvey, Vesalius, and others was seminal to this development. Before the so-called scientific revolution, natural philosophers (the forefathers of scientists as we know them today) did not perform experiments, as manual labor was considered a lowerclass activity. This attitude, inherited from the Greeks, changed between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, as merchants and craftsmen gained economic and political power. As a result, economics, politics, and science went through significant changes. In that period, democracy, capitalism, and modern science were founded and emerged as the cornerstones of a new era. During the Enlightenment, in the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries, scientific disciplines started to be hierarchically classified. This classification works well in some instances, and without it, dealing with the rapidly growing body of knowledge of the past two hundred years would have been difficult. However, it fails to fairly represent the interdisciplinary work which has been, and continues to be, highly important. In this paper we give a taste of the rich historical relation between physics, mathematics, and the biological sciences. We argue that this will continue to play a very important role in the future, based on historical examples and on a brief review of the current situation.