The Department of Physics and Astronomy invites you to a colloquium featuring Dr. K. Birgitta Whaley, Department of Chemistry, Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center, University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Whaley will present her talk, “What role does Quantum Mechanics play in Biology?”, Tuesday, March 29, at 4:10 p.m. in Webster B17.
Meet for refreshments before the lecture at 3:45 – 4:10 p.m. in the foyer on floor G above the lecture hall.
Abstract: The development of quantum mechanics in the early years of the twentieth century transformed both physics and chemistry, providing a new understanding of the microscopic behavior of atoms and molecules. Questions were also soon asked about the implications of quantum mechanics for biology. The first era of quantum biology focused on analysis of structure and stability of biological entities within the framework of quantum and statistical physics. A second era of quantum biology began with the development of lasers in the 1960s, ushering in a new generation of dynamical experiments that could probe the very short time scales relevant to atomic and molecular motions. These experiments have become increasingly sophisticated and led to a renaissance of interest in quantum dynamical effects in biology. Today, advances in quantum sciences and nanotechnology are driving the development of both novel probes of living cells and microscopic studies of biological phenomena that may involve non-trivial quantum effects such as entanglement. In this talk I shall describe studies of biological phenomena showing evidence for dynamical quantum effects, focusing specifically on recent studies revealing quantum coherence in the light harvesting stages of photosynthesis and outlining the new questions that these studies raise for our understanding of the role of quantum mechanics in functional biological systems.
