All, Here's my drafted op-ed in response. Thanks to whoever posted the initial Op-Ed! Cheers, Will Wilson Assoc. Prof. Biology Duke Univ.
My area of science is (or, rather, was) mathematical evolutionary ecology. It offers an exciting blend of biological, mathematical, and computational challenges. As the occassional superstar biologist proclaims, people generally enter biology because of implicit interest of all things squirmy, but another factor might be the absence of mathematical demands in the earliest exposures when compared with subjects like physics and chemistry. This absence of math is a "cultural" phenomenon, however, and not because math has no applications to biology. It is perpetuated because the culture permits budding scientists to not confront and overcome their mathematical fears at an early age.
I grew up on a farm in central Minnesota, and was the first in my extended family to get a doctorate. Early on I loved science, it was fun, and farm chores were not. I did pretty well in math and computers, and earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. I was fascinated that one could put together math and physical phenomena, and actually derive the numbers that came out of experiments. I also didn't like the memorization of biology, when the names of all those cell parts slipped from my brain faster than a leaky membrane. I grew up in an academic culture where the rough thinking was that if your experimental results depended on statistical interpretations, your math wasn't very good or the science wasn't very firm.
After an extended 8-year postdoctoral re-education in Canada and California, I got a faculty position doing "interdisciplinary science" in a department of zoology, in part because interdisciplinary was popular and supported at the time. It was an exciting time for a young scientist applying mathematical and computational approaches to answer questions regarding the mechanisms determining the abundance and distribution of organisms.
In theoretical biology, like all scientific fields, the focus is not on data. Instead, scientists are obsessed with questions. A scientist starts with a puzzle -- physical, biological, or sociological -- then starts thinking about it using one's scientific knowledge. I used math and computers, and in my theory work the questions concerned the following: Why do mutualisms between organisms persist when cheaters abound? What features determine spatial variation in population densities? How does smart foraging affect animal grouping? What role does foraging play in the coexistence of species? Why are some plant species hermaphroditic while others have two genders? Why do many hermaphroditic plant species self-fertilize?
Sure, many biologists address these questions by going out into the field and doing experiments -- exactly what they love to do! To me, that's just too close to farming (which, as it turns out, seems quite attractive these days), but another approach involves sitting back with a pad of paper and writing down the important variables and thinking about the interactions. Expressing these as mathematical equations -- often sets of differential equations involving space, time, and life history states -- leaves a scientist with very challenging mathematical problems. I've used things from simple algebra to series manipulations to partial differential equations and statistical dynamics. There is no end to the mathematical excitement to be found in biology.
The only difference between the mathematical challenges available in physics and biology is that most biologists never learn the mathematical tools because the culture of biology doesn't require it. That culture doesn't appear likely to change, and the last decade or so has seen a huge emphasis on huge amounts of genomic data that only statistical analyses can seemingly approach.
Since about 2000, there has also been a strong emphasis on science that adds directly to the gross domestic product, and areas like mathematical evolutionary ecology involves three things the Bush Administration certainly did not like. Indeed, the National Science Foundation division that funds ecology has so little resources that grant proposals have rejection rates exceeding 90 percent, and a topic involving math has very little chance. Likewise, the discipline doesn't generate patents or further the sports programs that higher education now values.
I no longer use calculus in my studies: so few resources, so many environmental challenges, so little time, so I've moved on to writing books about the environmental challenges brought on by urbanization. Yet, there can be a huge role for mathematics in biology, if only biology would accept math.
-- http://www.biology.duke.edu/wilson/ New Book: http://www.constructedclimates.org/
