I don’t about you but I grew up on equilibrium statistical mechanics. The beauty of a partition function, an ensemble, the ability to understand thermodynamic principles from microscopic rules. I love that stuff.
But what if we want to understand biology? Is a partition function really the most important object? This Fall, I’m going to lecture on biophysics for an assortment of biology and biomedical engineering students for just a few weeks; and for the first time in my teaching career, I’m planning to omit a partition-function based description of molecular behavior. I’m just not convinced it’s important enough for an abbreviated set of lectures.