Denis Noble
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Born | November 16, 1936 |
|---|---|
| Residence | UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Field | Systems biology |
| Institution | Oxford University |
| Notable prizes | British Heart Foundation Gold Medal (1985) |
Denis Noble FRS (born November 16, 1936) is an eminent British biologist who held the Bourdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Psychology at Oxford University from 1984-2004 and is now Professor Emeritus and co-Director of Computational Physiology. His research is focussed on using computer models of biological organs and systems to interpret function through from the molecular to the whole body levels. With its international collaborators, his team has used supercomputers to create the first virtual organ, the virtual heart. He is one of the pioneers of Systems Biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart in 1960.[1]
Noble was educated at Emanuel School and University College London[2] where he obtained his PhD under Otto Hutter[3]. In 1958 he began his investigations into the mechanisms of heartbeat. This led to two seminal papers in Nature in 1960 giving the first proper simulation of the heart. Remarkably it became clear that there was not an oscillator which controlled heartbeat, but this was an emergent property of the feedback loops in the various channels. He obtained his PhD in 1961.
As Secretary-General of the International Union of Physiological Sciences 1993-2001, he played a major role in launching the Physiome Project, an international project to use computer simulations to create the quantitative physiological models necessary to interpret the genome.
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[edit] Awards and recognition
His major invited lectures include the Darwin Lecture for the British Association in 1966, the Nahum Lecture at Yale in 1977 and the Ueda lecture at Tokyo University in 1985. He was President of the Medical Section of the British Association 1991-92. He was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1988 and an Honorary Fellow in 1994, an Honorary Member of the American Physiological Society in 1996 and of the Japanese Physiological Society in 1998. In 1979 he was awarded a CBE, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
[edit] Views on reductionism
His 2006 book The Music of Life explains some of the basic aspects of systems biology, and debunks the ideas of genetic determinism and genetic reductionism which have taken hold in the popular mind. He points out that there are many examples of feedback loops and "downward causation" in biology, and that it is not reasonable to privilege one level of understanding over all others. He also explains that genes in fact work in groups and systems, so that the genome is more like a set of organ pipes than a 'blueprint for life'.
He explicitly contrasts Dawkins's classic statement in The Selfish Gene ("Now they [genes] swarm ... safe inside gigantic lumbering robots ... they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence") with his own view: "Now they are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existience" and points out that there is no empirical difference between these statements (pp12-13) which differ in "metaphor" and "sociological or polemical viewpoint" (p14)[4]
His approach is commended by Patrick Bateson who says: "After the great successes of molecular biology, the time has come to re-assemble the organism. Dennis Noble tells us why this needs to be done. He also tells us how to go about it. Strongly recommended" [5]
[edit] Publications
[edit] Books
- Initiation of the Heartbeat, 1975, 2nd Edition 1979
- Electric Current Flow in Excitable Cells, 1975
- Electrophysiology of Single Cardiac Cells, 1987
- Goals, No Goals and Own Goals, 1989
- Sodium-Calcium Exchange, 1989
- Ionic Channels and the Effect of Taurine on the Heart, 1993
- The Logic of Life, 1993;
- The Music of Life (2006) OUP ISBN 0-19-929573-5
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Sources
- (for basic biographical information) Who's Who 2004.
[edit] References
- ^ "[1]"
- ^ http://noble.physiol.ox.ac.uk/People/DNoble/
- ^ Dennis Noble, The Music of Life, ISBN 0-19-929573-5
- ^ He actually writes both statements out (p12) and then (p13) writes them both together line by line, and explores the differences at length
- ^ commending The Music of Life, quoted on the book
