Tustin Lecture: 2008. Systems Biology and the Spirit of Tustin

This lecture will use Tustin's idea of a systems approach as a vehicle with which to suggest structure for this process. Specifically, we will describe the background and outline the opportunities for control and systems analysis in biology and physiology. We will then look forward to see how feedback control ideas, originally developed for the analysis and design of physical systems, might be extended to help our search for the mechanisms that govern living systems.

Peter Wellstead was born in 1944 in St Albans, Hertfordshire, where his father was a farm worker. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to the Marconi Instruments Company where a generous apprentice scheme and County Scholarships enabled him to study part-time and eventually obtain a degree in Electrical Engineering from Hatfield College of Technology (later Hertfordshire University).