Introduction

Abstract

This thesis is centred on the mathematical methods used to describe the dynamics of populations. Although the term “population” has in this context a wide meaning—discrete sets of interacting entities, without specifying the nature of the entities—I shall often refer to populations of molecules and call their interaction “chemical reactions”. This is mostly because the methods used to capture the dynamics of many objects found their initial application in physical chemistry, in the descriptions of the kinetics of chemicals, and most of the technical vocabulary originates from it.