"Untold Love Story"

Different love stories had been told  here and there. Each stories has its own beginning and end, whether a happy ending fairytale or a heartbreaking tragic story. But recently, I've heard, or rather, I have read that a love story exists but is totally ignored by common folks. This love story is somewhat similar as with Maya and Sir Chief's, from a servant and a boss which actually ended up being together. Sounds interesting? Let me start....

                Once upon a time, there was a servant, namely Mathematics, who faithfully 

                serves and helps his boss in any possible way he can. His boss was famous

                for explaining life and living organisms, including their structure, function,

                growth,   evolution,   distribution,  and  taxonomy. She was called Biology.

                This  servant  was  just known for assisting  in  terms  of  calculations  and 

                testing the significance of statistical patterns in data.Many had said that the

                servant   didn't  contribute  much  in  conceptual  insight  or  understanding 

                nor inspire great theories and  experiments. That is   why  people  treat  the 

                servant like he didn't exist at all. But years passed, the discoveries made by

                Biology became the cause  of numerous problems, confusions, doubts  and

                questions  to arise. The faithful servant, who had  secretly  loved  his  boss, 

                came  to  her  rescue by  giving  significant  mathematical  inputs to solved 

                them. Biology  was  really  thankful  and  started  to  fell  for the guy. This

                marked the love story of Mathematics and Biology.

You may think of me as absurd, hopeless romantic (?), or crazy but after reading the book entitled "Mathematics of Life" by Ian Stewart, this scene automatically popped into my mind. Believe it or not, this is what I had learned or understood from the book. In the field of science, particularly Biology, Mathematics had been on the sideline, neglected and abandoned by those scientists who were busy doing enormous experiments. But when biology is in need of help, mathematics never fail to lend its hands. Let us see how these two different worlds collided and made a great couple in Ian Stewart's book.

The first part of the book tells us about the 5 great revolutions in which scientists' life revolved. These were (1) the microscope; (2) classification; (3) evolution; (4) Genetics; and (5) the structure of DNA. It is then followed by a series of overloaded biological information which we learned in Second Year, starting from the cell and the processes it undergoes to the evolution of different species having different genetic codes.

Along with these explanations are contributions of Mathematics which may seem little but holds a great importance. In the microscope, he mentioned how mathematics contributed to its discovery. Since there is a vast variety of species, math was needed to organized and classify them.

He also associated numerical patterns in the geometry and arrangement of petals, leaves and seed heads in the Plant Kingdom and even discussed about the origin of species and Mendel’s research. The usefulness of mathematics to simplify the chemistry in DNA structure was also elaborated in the book. See? Everything we know in Biology is associated with Mathematics. 

The book tells us more relations of mathematics to different branches of biology like topology, a branch of mathematics, used to describe and understand the shape of DNA, animals to symmetry and pattern formations, various stages of the process of an egg to mathematical models, mating strategies of animals, game theory, minimax theorem and how science is not based on direct observation but indirect inference.

Mathematics had really been of great help to Biology not only in terms of calculations and statistical patterns in data. Mathematicians and Biologists work hand-in-hand to deal with the most difficult scientific problems that this world withholds.

And so...

                    Mathematics and Biology unite to make new babies, I mean new discoveries

                    that will help us understand this complicated world. We  can now  say, "And

                    they lived happily ever after.".

This is the untold love story of a love that conquers all.