Prof. Wokyung Sung, a member of the Journal of Biological Physics editorial board and former Editor-in-Chief in the period 2007–2009, is about to retire this year as a Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics of the Pohang University of Science & Technology. It is for this special occasion and to recognize Prof. Sung’s contributions to statistical biological physics, that his colleagues and friends are organizing an international conference entitled SURMOUNTING “THE INSURMOUNTABLE”—PATHWAYS of BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS to be held this summer in Pohang, South Korea, on the occasion of which the Journal of Biological Physics would like to thank Prof. Sung as a long-time member of the editorial board and a former Editor-in-Chief. After graduating from Seoul National University, Prof. Sung finished his PhD studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. He started his scientific career in the early 1980s working on transport phenomena and other statistical aspects of the physics of fluids. In the mid-1990s, he broadened his interests to other fundamental aspects of soft matter and polymer physics, but more importantly for this occasion, also to general physical approaches to biological phenomena and specifically to several fundamental problems in biological physics. He was the first to devise a statistical model for polymer translocation through a membrane pore [1]. His seminal work on this problem later engendered a whole new separate field in biological physics. The other two research areas where Prof. Sung was very active were semiflexible polymer theory, particularly in the case of confinement and as it relates to the description of DNA, and biomembrane fluctuations, electrostatic interactions, and related phenomena. He also contributed essentially to stochastic models of conductance in ion channels and to the various aspects of the theory of stochastic resonance in the context of polymer and ion-channel physics. His current research interests include the physical understanding of basic biological conformations and processes that emerge at the mesoscopic (cellular) level, the methodological questions in the statistical physics of soft matter (polymers, membranes) and stochastic phenomena (barrier crossing, stochastic resonance, and other issues of noise-assisted cooperative dynamics). His most recent paper deals with an improved mesoscale model of DNA [2], and was highlighted as “DNA helicity and elasticity explained on the nanoscale” in 11 media, such as Phys.org, Physics News, Science Daily, Science Newsline, Nanotechnology Now, etc. For his seminal contributions to science and in particular to biological physics, Prof. Sung was awarded a Medal of Science and Technology bestowed by the Korean Government in 2010. He also served as a Special Advisor to the Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics (APCTP) in Pohang, and as a Chairman of the Statistical Physics Committee of the Korean Physical Society. Professor Sung was a Visiting Professor at Oxford University (1991), the Max-Planck Institut fur Festkorperforschung, Stuttgart, Germany (1991), the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA (1997), the Juelich Research Center, Juelich, Germany (1999), the University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA (2000), and Brown University, Providence, RI, USA (2007–2008). One could sum up his scientific career with the motto: he is among those who bring physics to life, and life to physics.

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社论：Wokyung Sung 教授与生物物理学途径

Wokyung Sung 教授，Journal of Biological Physics 编委会成员，2007-2009 年期间的前任主编，今年即将退休，担任浦项大学物理系物理教授。科学技术。正是在这个特殊的时刻，为了表彰 Sung 教授对统计生物物理学的贡献，他的同事和朋友们正在组织一场名为 SURMOUNTING “THE INSURMOUNTABLE”—PATHWAYS of BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 的国际会议，将于今年夏天在韩国浦项举行，借此机会，Journal of Biological Physics 要感谢 Sung 教授作为编委的长期成员和前任主编。从首尔国立大学毕业后，Prof. Sung 在美国纽约州立大学石溪分校完成了他的博士研究。他于 1980 年代初开始了他的科学生涯，研究传输现象和流体物理学的其他统计方面。在 1990 年代中期，他将兴趣扩展到软物质和高分子物理学的其他基本方面，但对于这次更重要的是，他还研究了生物现象的一般物理方法，特别是生物物理学中的几个基本问​​题。他是第一个设计聚合物通过膜孔易位的统计模型的人 [1]。他在这个问题上的开创性工作后来在生物物理学中产生了一个全新的独立领域。宋教授非常活跃的另外两个研究领域是半柔性聚合物理论，特别是在限制的情况下，因为它与 DNA 的描述、生物膜波动、静电相互作用和相关现象有关。他还对离子通道中电导的随机模型以及聚合物和离子通道物理学背景下随机共振理论的各个方面做出了重大贡献。他目前的研究兴趣包括对介观（细胞）水平上出现的基本生物构象和过程的物理理解、软物质（聚合物、膜）和随机现象（障碍交叉、随机共振和噪声辅助合作动力学的其他问题）。他最近的论文涉及改进的 DNA 中尺度模型 [2]，并在 Phys.org、Physics News、Science Daily、Science Newsline、Nanotechnology Now 等 11 家媒体上被强调为“在纳米尺度上解释的 DNA 螺旋性和弹性”。 表彰他对科学，尤其是生物物理学的开创性贡献, Sung 教授于 2010 年获得韩国政府授予的科学技术奖章。他还担任过位于浦项的亚太理论物理中心 (APCTP) 的特别顾问，并担任统计物理委员会主席韩国物理学会。Sung 教授是牛津大学（1991 年）、德国斯图加特马克斯普朗克研究所（1991 年）、美国马里兰州贝塞斯达国立卫生研究院（1997 年）、朱利希研究中心的客座教授，德国（1999 年），宾夕法尼亚大学，宾夕法尼亚州，美国（2000 年）和美国罗德岛普罗维登斯的布朗大学（2007-2008 年）。人们可以用这样一句座右铭来总结他的科学生涯：他是将物理学带入生活，将生活带入物理学的人之一。