Denis Noble 

Denis Noble was educated at University College London where he obtained his PhD in 1961. This concerned the first computer modelling of the heart and was published in two articles in Nature in 1960. From 1984 to 2004, he was the Burdon Sanderson Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology, Oxford University, a Chair financed by British Heart Foundation He is now co-Director of Computational Physiology. His research is focussed on using computer models of biological organs and systems to interpret function through from the molecular to the whole body levels. With its international collaborators, his team has used supercomputers to create the first virtual organ, the virtual heart. As Secretary-General of IUPS he played a major role in launching the Physiome Project, an international project to use computer simulations to create the quantitative physiological models necessary to interpret the genome. He is author of The MUSIC of LIFE.


The Music of Life

The Music of life recorded on the 22nd of January 2008 at the Museum of the History of Science Oxford. Denis Noble delivers a lecture on his successful book “The Music of Life”, Biology beyond the genes with musical accompaniment by Christoph Denoth.


Papers
  • Kohl P, Noble D, Winslow R & Hunter PJ. Computational modelling of biological systems: tools and visions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 2000; 358: 579-610.
  • Noble D. Modelling the heart: from genes to cells to the whole organ. Science 2002; 295: 1678-1682.
  • Noble D. The Rise of Computational Biology. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 2002; 3: 460-463.
  • Noble D. Modelling the heart: insights, failures and progress. BioEssays 2002; 24: 1155-1163.
  • Ten Tusscher KHWJ, Noble D, Noble PJ & Panfilov AV. A model of the human ventricular myocyte. American Journal of Physiology 2003.
  • Crampin EJ, Halstead M, Hunter PJ, Nielsen P, Noble D, Smith N & Tawhai M. Computational Physiology and the Physiome Project. Experimental Physiology 2004; 89: 1-26.

Books
  • The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes 
  • Noble D. A modification of the Hodgkin-Huxley equations applicable to Purkinje fibre action and pacemaker potentials. Journal of Physiology 1962; 160: 317-352.
  • Noble D & Tsien RW. Outward membrane currents activated in the plateau range of potentials in cardiac Purkinje fibres. Journal of Physiology 1969; 200: 205-231.
  • McAllister RE, Noble D & Tsien RW. Reconstruction of the electrical activity of cardiac Purkinje fibres. Journal of Physiology 1975; 251: 1-59.
  • DiFrancesco D & Noble D. A model of cardiac electrical activity incorporating ionic pumps and concentration changes. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 1985; 307: 353-398.
  • Hilgemann DW & Noble D. Excitation-contraction coupling and extracellular calcium transients in rabbit atrium: Reconstruction of basic cellular mechanisms. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 1987; 230: 163-205.
  • Jack JJB, Noble D & Tsien RW. Electric Current Flow in Excitable Cells. OUP, Oxford. 1975.
  • Noble D. The Initiation of the Heartbeat. OUP, Oxford. 1975.