Teaching Biological Physics

As the ¯eld of Biological Physics expands at breakneck speed within our community and within our departments, the need for both undergraduate and graduate courses grows along with it. Such courses serve not only physics majors, but also students from the life sciences who need to understand the role of physical principles and concepts in understanding the world of biology. Using examples from three universities, we o®er some perspectives on the justi¯cations for departments to move into this area and incorporate biological physics into the standard curriculum, an emerging consensus on the syllabus for introductory and intermediate lecture courses for majors and non-majors in science and engineering, and an example of an advanced interdisciplinary graduate laboratory. PACS numbers: The past few years have seen an unprecedented surge of interest in biological problems by people with physics training, working in Physics departments. A host of new experimental and theoretical techniques has opened up the quantitative study of systems ranging from single molecules to vast networks of simple agents performin