Year: 2009
Type: editorial
Abstract: Modern nonlinear science got started when Enrico Fermi, John Pasta, Stan Ulam, and Mary Tsingou Menzel discovered a remarkable effect about nonlinear system dynamics while exploring the dynamics of a chain of masses connected by anharmonic springs via a computer simulation (in 1952!) [1,2].To their great surprise, the system was not ergodic under certain initial conditions, but periodically returned to its original conditions.The Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou discovery of what could be called nonthermalization took a while to get into the public domain, and during this time the mathematician Martin Kruskal at Princeton, with Norman Zabusky at Bell Labs, discovered that there were integrable solutions to a nonlinear differential equation called the Korteweg de Vries (KdV) equation that came out of studies of nonlinear dispersive waves [3].These solutions had remarkably robust properties and Kruskal coined the term "soliton" to describe them, a wonderful term that immediately entered the public domain.Of course, these kinds of self-sustaining structures in anharmonic systems had been seen before, most notably in the case of John Scott Russell in 1834 who discovered what he called a "wave of translation" due to the abrupt stopping of a canal barge [4].Solitons are particularly interesting phenomena and important to physics at many different levels because they act as "particles" with an identity as they move through an anharmonic region.An excellent introduction to solitons can be found in the book by Drazin and Johnson [5].A remarkable surge in the interest in solitons in biology occurred in the early 1970s because of two people: Alwyn C. Scott, a powerful theoretical physicist with a strong interest in nonlinear phenomena and biology, and Alexander Davydov, an eminent theoretical solid state theorist.Davydov constructed in 1973 a fully quantum mechanical model for vibrational energy propagation down the alpha helix of a protein, but it was not a very accessible article to either find (in the Western literature) or read [6].Al Scott became fascinated with the subject and wrote several masterful reviews of the subject [7,8] and helped popularize the idea that these quantum nonlinear entities might be important in biology.Among his efforts were the unearthing of Scott Russell's original
Source: Journal of Biological Physics
Author: Robert H. Austin
Institution: Princeton University
Language: English
Topic: Nonlinear Waves and Solitons
Subfield: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,290
OpenAlex ID: W2012871160