One of the most promising new directions in biology in the 1990s was the incorporation of physics into the field. Biologists began to borrow some of the mathematics of physics in order to explain biological phenomena. And similarly, physicists studied living biological systems as models for some particularly complex physical processes. The interface between biology and physics has come to be called biophysics.

Biologists have long used laboratory techniques that originated with physics. A prime example is the use of carbon 14 ((C₁₄)), the long-lived radioactive isotope that is found in all living things. Its value to the study of plant and animal systems and to paleontology is immeasurable. (C₁₄) was discovered in 1940 by a chemist working at one of the world's premier physics laboratories, the University of California's Radiation Laboratory. Other methods first devised or used by physicists and now commonly applied to biology...