Our History

The decision to establish the Diyarbakır Faculty of Medicine was taken on 13 December 1966 by the decision of the Senate of Ankara University. Students who had received two years of education within Ankara University Faculty of Medicine were transferred in 1969 to the Diyarbakır Faculty of Medicine, which was opened in Diyarbakır; and from that date on, Medical Physics – Biophysics courses began to be taught in Diyarbakır.From its formation to its death, the human organism is in continuous interaction with its environment through internal and external energies. In the activity of these energy environments, electrical signals, for example, come to the fore, and it is known that from the beginning of life to its end they are absolutely essential for maintaining the vital functions of certain organs that are of vital importance to the organism. For the cessation of these signals means the cessation of life as well. For example, when ECG signals in humans begin to flow along the zero line, the death of the organism has occurred. The mechanisms by which these vital bioelectric signals are generated are one of the principal fields of interest of Biophysics, and for this reason Biophysics is a life science. Accordingly, Biophysics can be defined as the physics of living beings, or the use of the rules and methods of physics in the study of living beings, or else the study of the biological events occurring in a biological system through physical observations and methods. Biophysics is a multidisciplinary discipline. Although the cell, the basic unit of life, constitutes the subject of study of the discipline of cytology, multidisciplinary scientific knowledge is needed to understand this living unit. For this reason, in order to understand the cell today, it is necessary to resort to cell biology, cell histology, cell biophysics, cell physiology, cell pharmacology or cell biochemistry. Therefore, absolute multidisciplinary scientific knowledge is needed to understand the organism, which requires multidisciplinary knowledge even to understand the basic living unit. The fact that Biophysics is a multidisciplinary discipline reveals its absolute necessity, especially in understanding the human organism.Following Physiology, the life sciences called Biochemistry and Biophysics emerged and, by questioning the causes and consequences of events by asking "why", "for what reason" and "how", they helped to explain the unknowns of the living system. The rapid developments in Biophysics, which is the common denominator of many medical disciplines, primarily Physiology and Biochemistry, have given an important momentum to the developments across the broad spectrum of today's medicine extending from diagnosis to treatment, and the methods and techniques it has developed render physicians highly successful in the face of medical events. As of today, our Department of Biophysics, with a 39-year past and continuity, has trained 10 Professors and numerous Associate Professors and Assistant Professors. These faculty members have taken up posts at universities in various parts of our country. Our Department has hosted national and international congresses, has produced hundreds of publications published in domestic and international journals, and, with the contemporary medical education it follows, has proudly sustained and continues to sustain its education and training services within the Faculty of Medicine.In the courses given by the Department of Biophysics, the theoretical information on the subject is first conveyed to the students with slide presentations. Following the theoretical lectures, the practical applications related to the given course (within the framework of the program) are carried out by the students in the laboratory. In our theoretical lectures, the working mechanisms of the human body are explained from a biophysical perspective. For example, parameters such as the role of elastic potential energy and kinetic energy in the working principles of the respiratory or circulatory system, or the roles of forces such as the elasticity in the alveoli and surface tension, are discussed, and a different window is opened so that the student can better comprehend the phenomena. In Biophysics courses, each system is dealt with one by one (for example, the biophysics of vision, the biophysics of hearing). Each system is conveyed to our students by faculty members who are well-versed in the subject. Biophysics, which seeks to explain multidisciplinary human life from a different perspective, also has various sub-disciplines.