Article
Understanding life with topology
Can topological data analysis create a revolution in the life sciences?
Content about “ biology
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Article
Black Heroes of Mathematics 2021
This inspiring conference featured speakers from Africa, the US, the Caribbean and the UK. Here are some highlights.
Article
Spontaneous spirals
Simple mathematical rules can make for some interesting psychedelic science.
Article
Hunting and being hunted
A model of the interaction between predators and prey explains why sometimes frogs appear to eat snakes.
Article
Life's quantum crystal ball
Does the ability to predict the future define the fundamental difference between living and inanimate matter?
News story
Mindless searching
How stupid systems can use clever ways of finding things.
Article
How does your garden grow?
The division of plant cells is governed by their shape – just one example of how maths may reveal the fundamental laws underlying biology.
Article
Sex, evolution and parasitic wasps
Some things are so familiar to us that they are simply expected, and we may forget to wonder why they should be that way in the first place. Sex ratios are a good example of this: the number of men and women in the world is roughly equal, but why should this be the case? A simple mathematical argument provides an answer.
Article
Biology's next microscope, mathematics' next physics
It is thought that the next great advances in biology and medicine will be discovered with mathematics. As biology stands on the brink of becoming a theoretical science, Thomas Fink asks if there is more to this collaboration than maths acting as biology's newest microscope. Will theoretical biology lead to new and exciting maths, just as theoretical physics did in the last two centuries? And is there a mathematically elegant story behind life?
News story
How do insects find their way home?
When insects go foraging, they zoom off from their nest in complex zig-zag paths. How do they manage to find their way back home? And how do they manage to do so along a straight path? These questions are explored in an exhibit at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, currently taking place at the Southbank Centre in London.
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Of pancakes, mice and men
Genes normally evolve by tiny mutations, but every now and then something more radical occurs and entire genes along a chromosome get flipped. Understanding gene flipping boils down to solving a problem from pure maths. Colva Roney-Dougal and Vincent Vatter explain, taking us on a journey from waiters sorting pancakes, via one of the richest men in the world, to the genetic similarities of mice and humans.