Willis, A. J. “Energy and the evolution of life, by RF Fox. Pp 182.£ 21· 95. 1988. ISBN 0-7167-1849-9 (Freeman).” The Mathematical Gazette 73, no. 465 (1989): 264-265.
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This challenging and thought-provoking book is highly unusual in its breadth of treatment. The author, a professor of physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, ranges far outside the realms of physics and mathematics, for much of the book concerns biology, biochemistry and chemistry. In the preface among the many scientists to whom a debt is acknowledged are Fritz Lipmann and Christian de Duve from whom the author had the ‘good fortune to learn biochemistry and bioenergetics’, and George Uhlenbeck and Mark Kac under whom he studied nonequilibrium thermodynamics. The wide contacts with authorities in different disciplines have helped to make possible the present exciting synthesis and to justify the comment on the dustcover that ‘the book will inevitably raise debate among the cognoscenti’.