Leon Glass
Fellow
Current Employer
McGill University
Election Year
1998
Academy
Académie des sciences
Discipline
Medical Sciences
Department
Department of Physiology
Keywords
Cardiac arrhythmias, nonlinear dynamics, chaos, neural and gene networks
Leon Glass, Department of Physiology, McGill University, is a distinguished mathematical physiologist who has made seminal discoveries in physiology and in the applications of nonlinear mathematics to physiological problems. Glass discovered "Glass patterns" in vision, with M. C. Mackey proposed the "Mackey-Glass" delay equation for deterministic chaos and introduced the concept of "dynamical diseases", with M. R. Guevara and A. Shrier gave the first demonstration of chaotic dynamics in biology (in heart cells), and has been instrumental in bringing quantitative nonlinear mathematics to the study of cardiac arrhythmias. Glass' widely cited book (with M. C. Mackey), From Clocks to Chaos: the Rhythms of Life, showed the biological community how nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory can be used to help understand physiological systems.