Abstract:
Richard Feynman, the master physicist, also had a strong interest in biology. Although Feynman, as an undergraduate student of physics, (in-)famously asked his librarian for the "map of a cat", in later years he engaged deeply with ideas in biology. In this talk, I will discuss these forays into biology via which Feynman produced insights that not only spawned entirely new and ever-continuing technological advances, and thereby new physics, but also insights that continue to be highly relevant for our investigations and modern understanding of biology.
About the Speaker:
Shashi Thutupalli is an Associate Professor working at the Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines within the National Centre for Biological Sciences and is a joint faculty member at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences in Bangalore. In 2011, he obtained his Ph.D. in physics for his work on active matter at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Germany. He then moved to Princeton University as an HFSP Cross-Disciplinary Fellow. Since 2015, Shashi has been running a curiosity-driven research program in the physics of active and living systems. A particular focus has been on the interplay between eco-evolutionary processes and emergent mechanics in microbial populations.
