‘Nature’s engines: Powering life’

Prof. Julia M Yeomans 

The Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics 

Professor Julia Yeomans is a British theoretical physicist active in the fields of soft condensed matter and biological physics. She has served as Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford since 2002.

Julia Yeomans is distinguished for her development of novel numerical and analytical modelling tools to investigate a wide range of complex fluids. New approaches are needed for these materials because the physics covers a wide range of length and time scales, from details of microscopic molecular interactions to collective hydrodynamics. Yeomans’ research, which combines her expertise in statistical physics with the power of modern computers, is multifaceted, covering self assembly at molecular and macroscopic levels, drops moving in microchannels and on superhydrophobic surfaces, the rheology of highly non-Newtonian fluids such as liquid crystals, and most recently, interactions between bacterial swimmers.

For the Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture 2023, Professor Yeomans will consider how proteins are moved around a cell, what determines the swirling patterns of a starling murmuration and other questions pertaining to the patterns and formation of life. In particular, Professor Yeomans will address the new physical theories biophysicists are constructing to help understand living systems, which operate far from equilibrium.