Reddit reviews Biological Physics: with New Art by David Goodsell

If you want a textbook, I would recommend one of two books:

Biological Physics by Philip Nelson is a pretty good starting point. The author tried to write a book that is both as accessible as possible and introduces only the most important topics. He covers a lot of interesting, but important material like random walks and molecular machines assuming that the reader does not have a very strong background in either biology or physics. The advantage to this is that he covers only the most important ideas, and in a way that someone with only introductory physics and calculus can understand. The downside is that some of the results are not general, focussing on one dimension instead of three for example, and for the experienced his introductions can be a little redundant. Nelson tries to get around this by having an optional “Track 2” that goes into greater detail and looks are tough problems and original papers.

Physical Biology of the Cell by Rob Phillips is also very good. This book is much longer than the Nelson book and goes into greater detail on a lot of the material. Where Nelson was trying to include only the most important topics, Phillips tries to include everything. The upside is that this book covers more examples and often includes more general results, but it makes for a long read at over a thousand pages. A fairly strong background in some higher level physics, like knowing how to set up and use a partition function, makes reading this book much easier.

I personally like the Phillips book more than the Nelson book, but it depends on where you are at in your major. If you have just taken introductory physics, the Nelson book might be better, if you have taken some higher level courses (especially thermodynamics/statistical mechanics) the Phillips book would be better. Either way I recommend checking them out from the library before you buy them.

Edit: How could I forget this little gem: Can a Biologist Fix a Radio? by Lazebnik. If you want a nice introduction into the philosophy of biophysics, I strongly recommend this well written article.

I mostly learned from a variety of sources, as there's not an ideal single text on this avenue of research, IMO.

I found general small-angle scattering references for free here and here, the latter being a PDF document from the EMBL small-angle scattering group. For NSE experiments on these sorts of systems, it's pretty much expected you've already done characterization of your samples via small-angle x-ray and/or neutron scattering

I'd also recommend the NIST Summer School course materials as a good and inexpensive way to get started on the neutron spectroscopy side of things. Most of what I'd seen in terms of texts tended to be fairly pricey monographs when starting out, so I'd either borrow stuff from coworkers or my institutional library. There are advanced undergrad/starting grad student texts on x-ray & neutron scattering - e.g., 1 and 2 - but I didn't find out about them until a bit further into my studies.

As might be obvious, there's definitely inspiration and foundational work to be found in the polymer science literature. I went running to Doi and Edwards, for example, when I realized that I needed more background reading in this area, but I'm sure others have their particular favorites in this and related areas.

Insofar as the bio-side of things, well, I've been doing biophysically oriented research since I was an undergrad. I'd suggest a popular biophysics text as well (either Nelson's Biological Physics or Physical Biology of the Cell ) as a starting point/reference. These are aimed towards advanced undergraduates or new grad students as well, mostly due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topics. Speaking of PBoC, one of the authors maintains a publications page where you can check out the PDFs of his group's work.

I think I'll end there, as I think that should be enough pleasure reading for a little while, at least.

I'll just add here.

It seems intimidating at first. But it builds up just like math.

Personally, I really recommend Cambell's Biology as an introductory text. It is really great to start with. It explains things well, and maintains simplicity in explanations without sacrificing complexity at your level.

There is a big difference in how one studies biology vs mathematics. Mathematics is pretty much all problems, and thinking about those problems and concepts. Biology you generally don't have access to huge problem sets. You're lucky to find 30 multiple choice problems/chapter. It is mainly thinking about concepts in depth, over and over again critically, and memorizing details.

There are many ways of memorizing. The classic way many undergrads will do initially just memorize words. I think the best way is active learning. Ex: understanding exactly why things pass through the phospholipid bilayer and the various mechanisms they do(passive diffusion, primary and secondary active transport etc.) will allow you to predict whether things will pass through or not. I remember in my undergraduate cell biology class. My professor would mention an random molecule. Then we'd have to predict based on chemical structure if it would go through or not.

In biology things repeat themselves over and over again.

If you want to get into neuroscience texts. I'd recommend just getting through cambell's biology, and preferably a basic knowledge of chemistry as well. This will allow you to critically think about biology better. Truthfully, it is hard to truly understand why things happen unless you take organic chem and biochem. however you aren't trying to be a biologist or physician. So you can go as far as you feel you need to go.

If you need help I am a doctor and biomedical engineer. So I can certainly provide some assistance.

In biology, general study methods are...

Compare and Contrast Similar and Disimilar topics. You get a better conceptual understanding between hemidesmosomes, desomosomes, gap junctions, tight junctions and all of these cell-cell and cell-ECM interactions by comparing and contrast

Understand the chemistry behind why something happens. This may not make sense now, but if you know where ATP and ADP+Pi cycles occur in kinesins and dyneins, you will understand why each is attracted to opposinmg electrochemical polarities.

Learn words as images. When someone saids something like axon hillock, a picture should pop into your head. It makes it much easier to learn things if you visualize it in biology.

Biology is probably one of the few areas of science where things are ALWAYS changing. What we knew 5 years ago may not be the same today. So getting an up to date textbook is important. If it is older than like 3-4 years, it is probably not worth getting with some exceptions.
___
Here are some texts I recommend

Basic Biology: https://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-10th-Jane-Reece/dp/0321775651/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484097281&sr=8-1&keywords=campbell+biology

Biophysics: https://www.amazon.com/Biological-Physics-New-David-Goodsell/dp/0716798972/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484097568&sr=8-1&keywords=Biophysics

-I think this text is probably the best for you to start with since you have a mathematics background and the book takes a mathematics/physics approach to biology rather than a biology approach to physics/math. So you may enjoy this to start. Read the comments and evaluate yourself I suppose.

Cell Biology: https://www.amazon.com/Cell-Molecular-Approach-Seventh/dp/160535290X/ref=sr_1_11?
ie=UTF8&qid=1484097587&sr=8-11&keywords=Cell+Biology

-Everyone has different preferences for cell biology texts. It is such an up and coming field that there really is no best text. Personally this is one of my favorites. The images are beautiful, the explanations are as fantastic as they are going to be. This is a heavy duty text and is probably a sophomore/junior biology text. So don't go through this before Campbell. It also takes an experimental approach. Read them. Experiments in biology are like proofs in math. It's important to understand how we discovered something.

Neuroscience: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071390111/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3QI2HWYNLVU1I&coliid=I1OCX5XH50BMBO

This is my favorite. I have it on my shelf right now. Great reference for me as a physician if I need to review some neuro concept I have forgotten. A lot of my neurosurgery/neurology colleagues swear by it.

Neuroanatomy: https://www.amazon.com/Neuroanatomy-Illustrated-Colour-Text-5e/dp/0702054054/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1484098053&sr=8-4&keywords=Neuroanatomy

This is my favorite as a sole neuroanatomy text. however Netter's Anatomy is my absolute favorite anatomical text, the pictures are gorgeous especially neuroanatomy. however for someone like you, a dedicated neuroanatomy text may or may not be necessary. It is generally a text intended for clinicians, however anatomy is anatomy lol.

I hope I offered some resources to get you started!