| 14 August 2009 |
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This site can be reached with any of these URLs http://biology-pages.info http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages http://home.comcast.net/~john.kimball1/BiologyPages/ | |
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It has always seemed to me that the many parts that make up the subject of biology are related to each other more like the nodes of a web than as a linear collection of independent topics. So I believe that the power of hypertext will be better suited to learning about biology than is the linear structure of a printed textbook.
Another disadvantage of printed textbooks is the inevitable delay between the time that new advances in biology are reported and the time that they can become incorporated in a printed book (often several years). Material here can be updated promptly.
So although some of this information has been drawn from the sixth edition of the author's text Biology published in 1994 by Wm. C. Brown, every effort has been made to adapt the material to the opportunities provided by an online text.
In response to requests from those of you who would like to begin the study of biology but must work without the guidance of an instructor, I have introduced a page which attempts to present the topics in a sequential order similar to what one would find in a printed textbook.
Link to it.
A comprehensive list of other free, online biology books (as well as texts on other subjects) is available at Textbook Revolution.
Your comments, criticisms, and suggestions are always welcome. Send them to:
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1. Click the first letter of your desired term in the alphabet at the top of this page or any of the index/glossary pages
2a. scroll down to your desired item or, alternately,
2b.Open the "Find" dialog box from your browser's tool bar and enter the word you seek. If you begin with an uppercase letter AND choose "case sensitive" or "match case", you will increase your chance of hitting the topic item itself rather than hitting the same word appearing within other items.
Note that unless you have chosen the consolidated index, the Find function of your browser will only work for terms beginning with the letter of the page you are on (because each alphabetized section is on a separate page).
3a.A link at the bottom of every page returns you to this welcome page (where you can then link to the first letter of a new item).
3b.Each index/glossary page also has a link ("Next Search") to the alphabet at the top of that page.
3c. You can pull down the history list ("Go" on the Netscape and Internet Explorer menus) and release on the welcome page ("Kimball's Biology Pages") or any other earlier page.
3d. If you are using a frames-capable browser, you can use the link at the top of this page ("FRAMES VERSION") to place a clickable alphabet that will remain at the top of each window.
John W. Kimball has retired from a lifetime of teaching biology. A graduate of Harvard College, he began his teaching career at the secondary level, teaching chemistry and biology to students at Phillips Academy, an independent school in Andover, Massachusetts. In 1969, he returned to Harvard to study immunology with the late Professor A. M. Pappenheimer. After receiving his Ph.D. there, he went on to teach introductory biology (in both majors and nonmajors courses) and immunology at Tufts University where he became a tenured professor. In 1982 he returned again to Harvard where he taught immunology and also participated in teaching the introductory course for majors.
The first edition of Kimball's general biology text was published in 1965. Since that time it has gone through five revisions, the most recent being the sixth edition, which appeared in 1994 (that's its cover on the right). He has also published books on cell biology and a widely-used text on immunology. His biology books have also been published in Spanish, German, Japanese, Arabic, Polish, Korean and Indonesian versions.