SOME PRELIMINARY IDEAS
Biologists are interested in every kind of living thing. When they study organisms in relation to atomic radiations, they enter the field of radiobiology, which really is not a science in itself but merely a branch of the larger interest in biology. Biologists find that atomic energy has significance both in the study of individual organisms and in studies of organisms in their natural communities and habitats.
Skin-diving biologist collecting giant clam from coral bottom of Bikini Lagoon in the Pacific Ocean.
Radioactivity introduced into any community may be “taken up” by the biological system, becoming subject to cycling in food chains or to accumulation in plant or animal tissues. The presence of radioactivity permits study of the workings of a system as large as an ocean, perhaps, or of one no larger than a tree. And in each case it thus may be possible to observe how the cycles of organic renewal are related to the larger systems of life on earth.