Russell K. Hobbie
received a B. Physics from MIT and a PhD from Harvard University. He went to the University of Minnesota as a post-doc in 1960 and remained there for 38 years. Originally working in nuclear physics, he became interested in medical issues when he met Richard Reece, MD at a party. The two worked on computer-assisted interpretation of laboratory test results for several years.


Hoping to make the pre-med physics course more interesting, Prof. Hobbie, between 1971 and 1973, audited all the courses medical students take in their first two years at the University of Minnesota. He was amazed by the amount of physics he found in these courses that had seldom been discussed in the general physics course. A number of articles he wrote for the
American Journal of Physics
presaged the current content recommendations for pre-med and biological physics courses.


Prof. Hobbie also found a great discrepancy between the physics in papers in the biological researchliterature and the level of understanding of most biology majors or pre-med students who have taken a year of physics. It was clear that an intermediate level physics course would help these students. Prof. Hobbie developed such a course in 1973, which led to the publication of
Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology
in 1978.


Prof. Hobbie is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He is a Fellow of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

Bradley J. Roth
was born in Clinton, Iowa in 1960, and was raised in Morrison, Illinois. He attended the University of Kansas, majoring in Physics (BS, 1982) and Vanderbilt University (MS, 1985; PhD, 1987). In graduate school, he worked in the Living State Physics Laboratory headed by John Wikswo. In 1988, Prof. Roth joined the Biomedical Engineering and Instrumentation Program at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.


Prof. Roth's research at NIH centered on three themes: cardiac electrophysiology, magnetic stimulation of nerves, and analysis of the electroencephalogram. From 1995 to 1998, he was the Robert T. Lagemann Assistant Professor of Living State Physics at Vanderbilt. In 1998, he accepted his current position in the Department of Physics at Oakland University.


In 2006, Prof. Roth was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (Division of Biological Physics). The citation reads: "For his theoretical and numerical studies of bioelectric and biomagnetic phenomena, especially for his contributions to the bidomain model of the heart."

Bridges the gap between an introductory physics course and the physics needed by researchers and practitioners in medical physics, biological physics, biomedical engineering and medicine

Includes a rich problem set to help students develop computational proficiency

Emphasizes the application of physics at the organ and organism level Covers diagnostic imaging and radiation therapy

Offers a web site devoted to the book at [...] and an article relevant to the book every Friday at [...]

Mechanics.- Exponential Growth and Decay.- Systems of Many Particles.- Transport in an Infinite Medium.- Transport Through Neutral Membranes.- Impulses in Nerve and Muscle Cells.- The Exterior Potential and the Electrocardiogram.- Biomagnetism.- Electricity and Magnetism at the Cellular Level.- Feedback and Control.- The Method of Least Squares and Signal Analysis.- Images.- Sound and Ultrasound.- Atoms and Light.- Interaction of Photons and Charged Particles with Matter.- Medical Use of X Rays.- Nuclear Physics and Nuclear Medicine.- Magnetic Resonance Imaging.- Appendices.- Plane and Solid Angles.- Vectors: Displacement, Velocity and Acceleration.- Properties of Exponents and Logarithms.- Taylor's Series.- Some Integrals of Sines and Cosines.- Linear Differential Equations with Constant Coefficients.- Mean and Standard Deviation.- Binomial Probability Distribution.- Gaussian Probability Distribution.- Poisson Distribution.- Integrals Involving exp(-ax^2).- Spherical and Cylindrical Coordinates.- Joint Probability Distributions.- Partial Derivatives.- Fundamental Constants and Conversion Factors.