The Language of Mathematics

Abstract

Lord Kelvin once remarked that all of science could be divided into physics and stamp collecting. Although this rather patronizing comment of a physicist is not one that will appeal to all biochemists, it has an element of truth in it. A science can hardly claim to be a science as long as it remains no more than a catalogue of unrelated observations. Only when general laws can be proposed and tested by experiment can it be said to have passed from mere description into science. In chemistry the transformation from stamp collecting into science corresponded with the development of thermodynamics and, later, the atomic theory and theories of chemical bonding; in biochemistry, the gradual realization that understanding of life processes requires a foundation of physical chemistry and not just a list of metabolic reactions has played a corresponding role. It is no coincidence that mathematics has been central in all of these developments, and it is now almost impossible to comprehend even elementary biochemistry without a grasp of elementary mathematics. Fortunately for non-mathematically minded biochemists, however, the mathematics necessary for an undergraduate course in biochemistry is nearly all elementary, and nearly all of it has been touched on in every science student’s previous education. Little more is required, therefore, than to identify the parts of elementary mathematics that are important in biochemistry and to reinforce them with appropriate examples.