Modeling of Control and Dynamical Systems in the Life Sciences

Abstract

The text below was the basis for a series of lectures given by the author at the 14th Biennial Seminar of the Canadian Mathematical Congress held at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, August 12–24, 1973. Since the theme of the Seminar was “Optimal Control. Theory and Its Applications”, a fitting focus for these lectures might have been “applications of optimal control theory in the life sciences”. As the title of our lecture notes indicates, we have chosen instead to broaden the scope of these lectures to also include the contributions to the life sciences of investigators who employ the techniques and ideas in control theory, systems analysis, differential equations, and stochastic processes. Some of these efforts will, of course, involve applications of optimal control theory. But it is our view that many of the interesting efforts being made encompass much more than an application of control theory, even though they quite often do entail a utilization of the tools and approaches of this discipline.