"organismic sets" that provided a unified framework for physics, biology and sociology. This was subsequently developed by other authors through applications of category theory to relational biology, organismic supercategories and Complex Systems Biology. Rashevsky's most notable students Some of Rashevsky's most outstanding PhD students who earned their doctorate under his supervision were: George Karreman, Herbert Daniel Landahl, Clyde Coombs, Robert Rosen and Anatol Rapoport. In 1948, Anatol Rapoport took over Rashevsky's course in mathematical biology, so that Rashevsky could teach mathematical sociology instead. Administrative and political obstacles However, his more advanced ideas and abstract relational biology concepts found little support in the beginning amongst practicing experimental or molecular biologists, although current developments in complex systems biology clearly follow in his footsteps. In 1954 the budget for his Committee of Mathematical Biology was drastically cut; however, this was at least in part politically imposed, rather than scientifically, motivated. Thus, the subsequent University of Chicago administration—notably represented by the genetics Nobel laureate George Wells Beadle— who reversed in the 1960s the previous position and quadrupled the financial support for Rashevsky's Committee for Mathematical Biology research activities ("Reminiscences of Nicolas Rashevsky." by Robert Rosen, written in late 1972). There was later however a fall out between the retiring Nicolas Rashevsky and the University of Chicago president over the successor to the Chair of the Committee of Mathematical Biology; Nicolas Rashevsky strongly supported Dr. Herbert Landahl-his first PhD student to graduate in Mathematical Biophysics, whereas the president wished to appoint a certain US biostatistician. The result was Rashevsky's move to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and his taking ownership of the well-funded "Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics". Formation of Mathematical Biology, Inc. He also formed in 1969 a non-profit organization, "Mathematical Biology, Incorporated", which was to be the precursor of "The Society for Mathematical Biology", with the purpose of "dissemination of information regarding Mathematical Biology". In his later years, after 1968, he became again very active in relational biology and held, as well as Chaired, in 1970 the first international "Symposium of Mathematical Biology" at Toledo, Ohio, in USA with the help of his former PhD student, Dr. Anthony Bartholomay, who has become the Chairman of the first Department of Mathematical Medicine at Ohio University. The meeting was sponsored by Mathematical Biology, Inc. Final quest for principles of biology Rashevsky was greatly influenced and inspired both by Herbert Spencer's book on the