About:

A flock of birds, a shoal of fish, a swarm of robots, a colony of swimming bacteria...these are all examples of systems, composed of interacting units, that consume energy and collectively generate motion and mechanical forces on their environment. In recent years we have come to call such systems - which don't obey the laws of "normal" matter - active matter. Active matter shows a rich variety of collective behaviour, much of which remains mysterious.

In this Public Lecture, Tanniemola Liverpool will explain why we call these systems active matter, and will describe how statistical mechanics can help us to characterise them. He will then discuss some examples of experimental work studying active matter behaviour.

Tanniemola Liverpool is Professor of Theoretical Physics in the Applied Mathematics Institute of the School of Mathematics, at Bristol. His research primarily involves theoretical descriptions of complex fluids (membranes, polymers, gels...). He is increasingly interested in the study of "soft biological matter" (DNA, proteins, the cytoskeleton, gene regulation...), and the organising principles behind this highly interesting active (living) state of matter.