THERE鈥橲 an old joke about physicists modelling spherical cows to make the equations easy to handle. This mathematical approach has long been held in low regard by those who deal with the complexities of real cows and investigate life down to its molecular basis.
Now a change of attitude has been signalled by the US National Cancer Institute, which has asked distinguished physicists, engineers and computer scientists to share their expertise with cancer biologists (see 鈥淐runching cancer with numbers鈥�). Just as computers can recreate stars, so they could model the behaviour of cancer cells. Many biologists remain unconvinced.
Surely, though, when it comes down to a killer disease, there鈥檚 room for both conventional and maverick approaches. Let the physicists model till the spherical cows come home.
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