This book evolved from a graduate course on applications of statistical thermody namics to biochemical systems. Most of the published papers and books on this subject used in the course were written by experimentalists who adopted the phenomenological approach to describe and interpret their results. Two outstanding papers that impressed me deeply were the c1assical papers by Monod, Changeux, and Jacob (1963) and Monod, Wyman, and Changeux (1965), where the allosteric model for regulatory enzymes was introduced. Reading through them I feIt as if they were revealing one of the c1everest and...

This book evolved from a graduate course on applications of statistical thermody namics to biochemical systems. Most of the published papers and books on this subject used in the course were written by experimentalists who adopted the phenomenological approach to describe and interpret their results. Two outstanding papers that impressed me deeply were the c1assical papers by Monod, Changeux, and Jacob (1963) and Monod, Wyman, and Changeux (1965), where the allosteric model for regulatory enzymes was introduced. Reading through them I feIt as if they were revealing one of the c1everest and...

This book deals with a subject that has been studied since the beginning of physical chemistry. Despite the thousands of articles and scores of books devoted to solvation thermodynamics, I feel that some fundamen tal and well-established concepts underlying the traditional approach to this subject are not satisfactory and need revision. The main reason for this need is that solvation thermodynamics has traditionally been treated in the context of classical (macroscopic) ther modynamics alone. However, solvation is inherently a molecular pro cess, dependent upon local rather than macroscopic...

My personal involvement with the problem of hydrophobic interactions (HI) began about ten years ago. At that time I was asked to write a review article on the properties of aqueous solutions of nonpolar solutes. While surveying the literature on this subject I found numerous discussions of the concept of HI. My interest in these interactions increased especially after reading the now classical review of W. Kauzmann (1959), in which the importance of the HI to biochemical processes is stressed. Yet, in spite of having read quite extensively on the various aspects of the subject, I acquired...

This book was planned and written with one central goal in mind: to demonstrate that statistical thermodynamics can be used successfully by a broad group of scientists, ranging from chemists through biochemists to biologists, who are not and do not intend to become specialists in statistical thermodynamics. The book is addressed mainly to gradu- ate students and research scientists interested in designing experiments the results of which may be interpreted at the molecular level, or in interpreting such experimental results. It is not addressed to those who intend to practice statistical...