In the thirteen years since the first edition of this book appeared the growth of mathematical biology and the diversity of applications has been astonishing. Its establishmentas a distinct discipline is no longer in question. One pragmatic indication is the increasing number of advertised positions in academia, medicine and industry around the world; another is the burgeoning membership of societies. People working in the field now number in the thousands. Mathematical modelling is being applied in every major discipline in the biomedical sciences. A very different application, and surprisingly successful, is in psychology such as modelling various human interactions, escalation to date rape and predicting divorce.
The field has become so large that, inevitably, specialised areas have developed which are, in effect, separate disciplines such as biofluid mechanics, theoretical ecology and so on. It is relevant therefore to ask why I felt there was a case for a new edition of a book called simply Mathematical Biology. It is unrealistic to think that a single book could cover even a significant part of each subdiscipline and this new edition certainly does not even try to do this. I feel, however, that there is still justification for a book which can demonstrate to the uninitiated some of the exciting problems that arise in
biology and give some indication of the wide spectrum of topics that modelling can address.