Abstract
As we know, Arthur Winfree passed away a relatively short time ago. His
memory motived us to investigate his great influence in the biomathematical development
of one of the most important branches of Biological Sciences, i.e. the Chronobiology.
In this paper we present the “giants”, paraphrasing Newton, on whose shoulders
Winfree stood up seeing farther about biological rhythms, as well as some of his contemporaries.
We can appreciate Winfree’s influence in the field observing that when
he decided change his interest towards other fields, there appeared a certain fading
in the number of people working in circadian rhythms from a mathematical point of
view. However, the solid basements built by the founders of this branch of Science
have allowed that nowadays not only high quality papers of biomathematical contents
continue to appear in important journals, but also papers of pure mathematical problems
inspired by circadian rhythms. In fact, the building of the interface of Biology
and Mathematics has been reinforced in such a manner that both disciplines have mutually
benefited. Finally, we present a section in which it is possible to appreciate a
few articles that have appeared after Winfree.
