More Bio-physics Recommended

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31652, 11 April 1968, Page 8

More Bio-physics Recommended

Dr V. Heine, a lecturer in physics at Cambridge University, is surprised that the biophysics work in New Zealand is apparently undertaken only by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and not also by the universities.

Bio-physics applies physical techniques and ideas to biological questions. A country so heavily dependent on agriculture as New Zealand had much to gain from bio-physics, Dr Heine said.

However, New Zealand could not be called a laggard. The worth of bio-physics was just beginning to be appreciated in the universities of the world.

Dr Heine said he had noted “enormous development” of the universities and of research in New Zealand since he was a student in Otago in the 19505. His own field of theoretical solid-state physics had come of age here and overseas. No longer was discussion restricted to the properties and behaviour of metals and semiconductors such as transistors. The gap between the basic quantum laws of physics and the actual structure of metals was being closed. His own recent work con-

cerned the reasons why one metal crystallised with one arrangement of atoms and another crystallised with another arrangement—how to answer the wave equations of quantum mechanics. Dr Heine will speak to the mathematics and physics section of the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand this evening on symmetry in physics.