Science: Quantized Biology?

Ultimate goal of science—so distant that it is hardly more than an iridescent ideal— is to construct a unified system which will represent in exact terms all the phenomena of nature. Quantum mechanics is an exact, mathematical system for dealing with atoms and radiation. So named because its fundamental principle is that energy is exchanged in separate, indivisible bundles called quanta, quantum mechanics has been powerfully developed by such giants of physics as Bohr, de Broglie, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Dirac (Nobel Prizewinners all). It has interpreted the laws of radiation, the laws of specific heat, the details of atomic, molecular and X-ray spectra.

So far, science has barely made a start at representing biological processes in terms of exact mathematics. Statistical mathematics is extensively used in “some fields of life-science—for example, in genetics, for charting the occurrence of hereditary variations—and a great many biological processes have been reduced to chemical equations. But chemical equations are essentially descriptive. They assert that certain substances combine or dissociate to form other substances, but skim over the fundamental physical processes.

In recent years Dr. The Svedberg, a Swedish Nobelman, has done much research on giant protein molecules, determining their molecular weights after separating them in powerful centrifuges (whirling machines) of his own devising.

In the British journal Nature fortnight ago, Dr. Svedberg reported experiments on molecules of hemocyanin (molecular weight, 6,740,000 units), a blue pigment from the blood of mollusks. He and his co-workers at the University of Upsala bombarded the hemocyanin particles with quanta of energy in the form of ultraviolet light. Certain wave lengths of the bombarding radiation split the blood pigment molecules into halves. This was like splitting inorganic atoms in a high-voltage atom-smasher.

“Primary protein reactions,” declared Dr. Svedberg, “are . . . elementary acts which must, of necessity, obey the laws of quantum mechanics.” The implications of this statement are vastly more important to science than the actual splitting of blood pigment molecules. If the quantization of biological processes can be continued far enough, it will be possible to explain in exact mathematical terms—in terms of atomic energy levels and electronspins—what happens when insulin is secreted in the pancreas, when starch is broken down in the digestive system, when an ovum is penetrated and fertilized by a spermatozoon, many & many a complex biological phenomenon.