1

(Question has been edited for specificity based on feedback. I followed the guidelines StackExchange recommended to me: Are resource recommendations allowed?)

Within biophysics, I'm looking to build up understanding of statistical mechanics, especially protein folding, DNA mechanics, and cell biology, and of multiscale modeling, especially cell-to-tissue.

I do well with examples that I can follow along, or problem sets with answer keys to check, including problems assigned in Python, R, MATLAB, Mathematica, or C++. Differential equations, complex analysis, topology, probability, and measure theory are all fair game, but I'm also hoping to gain intuitive understanding, so I'm open to both proof-light undergraduate books for intuition and fully theoretic graduate books for rigor.

I have seen:

However, my background is very lopsided and I'm not sure those resources would fit, and the questions are also a few years old – which I thought might matter in a biology-based field, but I could be wrong.

I have a math BS/MS where I studied dynamical systems, and I did a statistics MS/PhD working on Bayesian MCMC computation in forensic genetics. While I assume I have sufficient mathematical background at least for a rudimentary introduction to the field, I have only ever taken a handful of basic science courses. As an undergrad I took a semester of Newtonian mechanics, a trio of biology courses, and a freshman science course that touched on chemistry and physics, but I assume that is hugely insufficient for a foundation in biophysics. However, I would prefer to learn from courses that teach things in a synergized way, if possible, to avoid multiple semesters of general physics, chemistry, and biology all taught separately. I understand if some separation is necessary to gain a foundation, but for career reasons I would rather learn the interaction of the fields from the start as much as possible.

I would appreciate textbook recommendations as well as video lecture series, if any are available.

  • 1
    As a general piece of career advice I would suggest to learn one discipline in depth. If you are interested in things like molecular biology, then I would become a molecular biologist first. If you want to do medical imaging, then I would study medicine etc.. While even renowned universities are now offering "crossover" courses and degrees, the usefulness of these "accelerated" studies in the workplace is highly questionable. What a high quality employer will hire you for are either your PhD work experience or your workplace qualifications (like a medical license to treat patients). – FlatterMann May 07 '23 at 16:16
  • 2
    Biophysics is not really a contiguous and compact domain of knowledge (a.k.a. field). It contains things that have very little to do with each other except being at the broad interface of physics and biology, e.g., biomechanics, neurophysics, bioacoustics, and population dynamics. There is little point in studying it in breadth, rather you want to focus in depth on what really matters to you. Therefore I doubt that one can make any reasonable recommendations without any further specifications. – Wrzlprmft May 07 '23 at 17:26
  • After the edit this seems like a nominally valid resource recommendation question, but I doubt you'll get any useful answers from physics stack exchange. I'd recommend a microbiology focused forum. All the resources most of us know about for statistical mechanics you will consider not nearly specialized enough to be even slightly helpful for understanding protein folding. Physicists learn about things like gasses, magnetizable materials, etc. in our statistical mechanics courses. Most physicists have little knowledge about systems so big and complicated as proteins. We know about atoms. – AXensen May 09 '23 at 13:54

0 Answers0