Environment

 The definition of biophysics is the science dealing with how physics applies to the processes of biology. The scientific study of biological processes in terms of the laws of physics. Phenomena such as echolocation in bats and the stresses and strains in skeletal and muscular structures are analyzed and explained in biophysics. mHE rise of biophysics is an expression of the fact that, more and more, physically trained scientists are becoming ensnared in problemis involving living matter. It is, after nuclear physics, one of the most significant developments of modern science. Physics for many reasons has long been concerned primarily with inanimate matter. But we are now faced with the tragic realization that a large ineasure of understanding and control of our physical environment, intellectually satisfying and wealth-producing though it is, has not only failed to define the living state but has engendered human probleins that endanger continuity of life itself. This is one of the most compelling reasons why physical science is imroving toward a greater preoccupation with the animate half of nature. Had biophysics developed a century ago it would probably soon have taken the form of a highly organized, if fragmentary, inquiry into the physics of biological material.