William Bialek

{{Short description|American biophysicist (born 1960)}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=November 2022}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = William Bialek

| image = File-WilliamBialekByPamDavis.jpg

| image_size = 275px

| caption =

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1960|08|14}}

| birth_place = Los Angeles, California

| death_date =

| death_place =

| nationality = American

| known_for =

| alma_mater = University of California, Berkeley

| doctoral_advisor = Alan Bearden

| doctoral_students = Leonid Kruglyak
Ilya Nemenman
Gasper Tkacik

| work_institution = Princeton University
City University of New York

| footnotes =

}}

William Samuel Bialek (born 14 August 1960) is a theoretical biophysicist and a professor at Princeton University and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Much of his work, which has ranged over a wide variety of theoretical problems at the interface of physics and biology, centers around whether various functions of living beings are optimal, and (if so) whether a precise quantification of their performance approaches limits set by basic physical principles.[http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/77291.php Study Of Fruit Fly Embryo Development Could Change How Scientists Think About Life.] Medical News Today, July 21, 2007[http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2007/07/20/fruit_fly_research_may_clean_up_conventional_impressions_of_biology.html Fruit fly research may 'clean up' conventional impressions of biology.] Biology News Net, July 20, 2007. Best known among these is an influential series of studies applying the principles of information theory to the analysis of the neural encoding of information in the nervous system, showing that aspects of brain function can be described as essentially optimal strategies for adapting to the complex dynamics of the world, making the most of the available signals in the face of fundamental physical constraints and limitations.[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080307182748.htm Insect's Sensory Data Tells A New Story About Neural Networks.] ScienceDaily (March 12, 2008)

Bialek received his AB (1979) and PhD (1983) degrees in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley. After postdoctoral appointments at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands and at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, he returned to Berkeley to join the faculty in 1986. In late 1990 he moved to the newly formed NEC Research Institute (now the NEC Laboratories) in Princeton. He is currently the John Archibald Wheeler/Battelle Professor in Physics at Princeton University, and a member of the multidisciplinary [http://www.genomics.princeton.edu/ Lewis–Sigler Institute]. In addition, he serves as Visiting Presidential Professor of Physics at CUNY Graduate Center.

Bialek has made contributions to shaping the education of the next generation of scientists, such as organizing the Princeton Lectures on Biophysics,Princeton Lectures on Biophysics, William Bialek. World Scientific Publishing Company (March 1993) {{ISBN|978-981-02-1326-8}} and World Scientific Pub Co Inc (June 1993) {{ISBN|978-981-02-1325-1}} a series of workshops that provided many young physicists with an introduction to the challenges and opportunities at the interface with biology. The textbook he coauthored, Spikes: Exploring the neural code Spikes: Exploring the Neural Code. Fred Rieke, David Warland, Rob de Ruyter van Steveninck and William Bialek. The MIT Press (June 25, 1999). {{ISBN|978-0-262-68108-7}} has also been similarly used by many young physics students as an introduction to neuroscience. He is currently involved in a major educational experiment at Princeton to create a truly integrated and mathematically sophisticated [https://www.princeton.edu/integratedscience/ introduction to the natural sciences] for first year college students. Most recently, he published Biophysics: Searching for Principles, a textbook based on his course for PhD students.Biophysics: Searching for Principles. W Bialek (Princeton University Press, 2012). http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9911.html