Life at low Reynolds number

E d i t o r’s note: This is a reprint (slightly edited) of a paper of the same title that appeared in the book Physics and Our World: A Symposium in Honor of Victor F. Weisskopf, published by the American Institute of Physics (1976). The personal tone of the original talk has been preserved in the paper, which was itself a slightly edited transcript of a tape. The figures reproduce transparencies used in the talk. The demonstration involved a tall rectangular transparent vessel of corn syrup, projected by an overhead projector turned on its side. Some essential hand waving could not be reproduced.