The Intersection of Physics and Biology

One day, while perusing the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives (as one does), I came upon a photo of an ecologist testing a sugar beet leaf with a diffusion porometer to learn more about atmospheric pollution in California. This intrigued me, because despite knowing that the physical sciences are really about all things, I’m still often stuck in the mindset that physics is about everything but living things. But of course, astrobiology, oceanography, climate science, ecology, medicine, and so many other branches of science either intersect with the physical sciences or impact it in some way. And then of course there’s how discoveries in the physical sciences, like nuclear weapons, have impacted humans and their environment. Everything is connected! So, this month let’s take a tour through many of the ways physics touches on biology, ecology, climate and atmospheric science, medicine, and the environment.

In this photo, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ecologist Joe Shinn tests a sugar beet leaf with a diffusion porometer, an instrument designed to measure how the plant reacts when subjected to gaseous pollutants. Plants inside the chamber are fumigated with various gases to determine the potential effect of emissions which might be released from geothermal power facilities in southern California’s Imperial Valley. According to his LinkedIn , Joe Shinn was an Environmental Scientist and Deputy Division Leader for Environmental Sciences at Lawrence Livermore from 1973-2003

Everly (E.J.) Workman (1899-1982) (on the right) was an atmospheric physicist who spent the bulk of his career in New Mexico, first at the University of New Mexico and then as President of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, where he established the Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research. In his 1983 obituary in Physics Today, he was commemorated “for the discovery of electric potentials associated with the freezing of dilute aqueous solutions (the Workman-Reynolds effect) and for his research in atmospheric electricity including thunderstorms and other weather-related areas.”
Dr. H.L. Stahnke was not just the head of Biological Sciences at Arizona State College, he was also known for his work with venomous creatures, most famously the scorpion, for which he created an antivenin in 1948, which virtually eradicated scorpion deaths in Arizona.

In this photo, the two scientists are shown together handling a Gila monster, a venomous lizard (the only one native to the US) following a lecture at the New Mexico Science Fair circa 1955.

This photograph shows two General Electric biologists removing the contents from a plankton trap in eastern Washington state at the Columbia River, downstream from the Hanford Atomic Site. Hanford processed plutonium, mostly for the US’s nuclear weapons program from 1943 to 1987 when the last reactor shut down. The object of the work shown in this photo was to collect specimens at the bottom of the aquatic food chain and study their tendencies to concentrate radioactive materials that are released into the river in reactor coolants. Unfortunately, the Hanford site contaminated both the land, water, and air in the area, increasing incidences of cancer and thyroid conditions. The Hanford site is now part of the Manhattan Project National Historic Park (which also includes Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Los Alamos, New Mexico) and the US Department of Energy is still involved in cleanup efforts.

Brookhaven National Laboratory F30

The Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor operated from 1950-1968 and was the world’s first reactor solely dedicated to peaceful atomic research.

This photo shows the experimental area on the top of the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor at Brookhaven National Laboratory. There are three active experiments happening:

1. In the center foreground, a technician is inserting a container of seeds into the biology thermal column, as part of the program to study radiation-induced mutations in plants.
2. At the platform structure to the rear, an experiment is being conducted in fundamental reactor physics studies.
3. To the right of the biology thermal column is seen the drum-shaped housing for a slow neutron chopper. This device consists of a series of rapidly revolving slotted disks, which only permit the emergence of neutrons of uniform speed.

This photo shows the“Experimental set-up for irradiating mouse brain tissue with a beam of 22.5-Mev deuterons from the 60-inch cyclotron. These experiments are part of a program designed to investigate the biological effects of cosmic ray primaries upon brain tissues. In this case, the deuterons were used to simulate primary cosmic ray particles. Although, in some cases, a maximum dose of 1,100,000 rads (a rad is the unit of absorbed dose and is the equivalent of 100 ergs per gram of any material) was administered, with beams ranging from 1mm to 0.025 mm in diameter. None of the animals exhibited any abnormal reactions after irradiation. This may indicate that the biological effects of primary cosmic rays may not be nearly as damaging as has been supposed. After the experimental animals were sacrificed, however, destruction of tissue components along the center of the beam path was observed, and histologic lesions were produced within 24 days of exposure, at a threshold dose of about 75,000 rads.”
Brookhaven National Laboratory, like many other scientific institutions, uses animal subjects in experiments, which is rigorously regulated , but still quite controversial. As recently as 2010, Brookhaven came under scrutiny for a planned experiment to irradiate monkeys to discover the effects of space radiation in order to prepare for deep space human travel to Mars. The experiment was canceled before being carried out.

Paul Bottomley (1953-) helped develop magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology, allowing for non-invasive ways of viewing the human body. In the 1980s, while working at General Electric, he built the first whole body MRI machine and was able to scan a human heart and brain.

In this photo, Pacific Gas & Electric Company aquatic biologist James Adams measures the volume and size of oysters growing in the discharge canal at the Humboldt Bay Nuclear Plant. This is one of many continuing investigations of the effects of power plant operations on aquatic life in the area. Results to date (no date on photo) have shown that the warmed water helps the oysters grow faster, and that radiation presents no health hazard, even if a person were to eat only oysters from the canal for their entire lifetime.

Gerty Cori (1896-1957) was a biochemist and the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1947 (along with her husband Carl) for her discovery of “of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen” now called the Cori Cycle. This helped us understand how cells convert food into energy and led to the development of treatments for diabetes.

This photographs shows an air pollution experiment. According to the description, “the three eye-irritation panelists are exposed to various combinations of automobile exhaust to determine the extent of eye irritation that each combination presents. At each exposure, the panelists note the severity of eye irritation they are experiencing. The work is being done in the Division’s Laboratory of Engineering and Physical Sciences, located at Taft Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.”

The National Air Pollution Control Administration came about as a result of the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955, the first federal legislation to address air pollution. It provided federal funding for research in air pollution. It was followed by the Clean Air Act of 1963, which addressed air pollution control and authorized the federal government to investigate ways of monitoring and controlling air pollution. The 1970 amendment then greatly expanded these roles for the government, creating the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in order to implement the requirements.

Description: “An air-sampling package awaits launch of the balloon which will carry it to an altitude of more than 100,000 feet. When the frozen air sample is returned to the laboratory, it will be chemically analyzed for trace constituents. The complex chemistry of the stratosphere is controlled by substances present in a few parts per million or even parts per billion. The program seeks to determine what the present composition of the stratosphere is, how much it is perturbed by natural forces, and then to predict the effect of supersonic aircraft operations.” While we don’t know for sure, it’s possible that this photo refers to NASA’s air sampling program.

George Francis McEwen was a physical oceanographer who studied everything from long-term weather forecasting to the dispersion of salt in the ocean. How could I not include a photo that includes a tool called a “bottom snapper”?

References

Boyle, Rebecca. “Greetings from Isotopia.” Science History Institute, https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/greetings-from-isotopia/.

Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor | Environmental Restoration Projects | BNL. https://www.bnl.gov/bgrr/#:~:text=The%20BGRR%20was%20the%20world’s,cooled%2C%20graphite-moderated%20reactor

Hanford Nuclear Site | Hazardous Waste | Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program. https://darrp.noaa.gov/hazardous-waste/hanford-nuclear-site .

Marx Brook, Marvin Wilkening; E. J. Workman. Physics Today 1 April 1983; 36 (4): 72. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2915604

United States Environmental Protection Agency. Evolution of the Clean Air Act. https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/evolution-clean-air-act.

“Valley Scientist Created a Life-Saving Scorpion Antivenin in the 1950s.” PHOENIX Magazine, 3 Mar. 2022, https://www.phoenixmag.com/2022/03/03/valley-scientist-created-a-life-saving-scorpion-antivenin-in-the-1950s/ .