Expert: Daniel Mazur - 11/11/2008

Question
QUESTION: hi daniel,
maybe you remember me. i asked a few questions related to careers in theoretical physics. well, another thing i came across was that there are hardly any jobs for a theoretical physicist after just completing a PhD. there are certainly jobs as a computational physicist and in the army and all but there are very bleak chances of jobs in universities as a researching physicist. is that true? also, how does a physicist get funded for their research work?
thanks
shikhin

ANSWER: Hello Shikhin,

yes, I remember. I think your question will be of interest to more people (my own students for example), so I am changing it to PUBLIC. Hopefully, you don't mind too much. Let me answer your second question first.

Scientific funding is a lengthy process. A scientist has an idea of what he/she would like to research. First, they must write a *proposal*, where they tell in detail about the importance of the work, how long it will take, what the approximate schedule of work will be, how much it is going to cost on salaries and other equipment, who will be the collaborators (people and institutions) and how the project complements with what is already being done in the area. In basic research it is usually desirable to stress out how the potential outcome may be then taken by the industry and create new commercial devices.

Secondly, one submits the proposal to a grant committee, usually government agency, but sometimes private company or foundation. If privately funded, you must expect to have restricted publication rights on your results, because they will become the property of the funding agent. The committees then decide in several rounds among dozens of proposals, which few they are going to fund - in this process they often ask for additional information to the proposals that look worthy. Then they decide, after some time you get the money and you can start. The whole thing between starting to write a proposal and receiving the funds (if chosen) can take a whole year.

Normally, you would write yearly (or semi-yearly) reports to the grant agency, how the work is going and of course after the time is up, you must write a final report. Successful completions of projects and a number of resulting publications are very important when you next apply for funds.

From this answer you can already see the weakness of theoretical physics: many times it cannot promise any practical applications. Pure theoretical science doesn't work like that. Sometimes institutions have their theory departments, but more often than not this is a prestigious and expensive *luxury* to keep a theory institute. Theorists then must either be funded as part of team that is actually working on some experimental problem, or they must apply for grants with agencies and foundations that are specialized in funding theorists.

For some reason, theoretical physics is among the most popular branches among students. Theoretical departments thus produce many potential theorists, who compete in their job market. For reasons stated above there are very few positions for them and only the very best catch on and get to do what they really like. Most theorists spend their early years after PhD programing calculations on (super)computers... I don't think many of them like it.

One of my ex-colleagues Alex Abrikosov, an N.P. winner for theoretical work on superconductivity, says that an experimentalist is almost always worth his salary - just as long as he is doing SOMETHING and does the measurements correctly. The data will not be lost and sooner or later someone will make sense out of them, even if he doesn't have a clue. A theorist, though, must produce something USEFUL so long as to be worth the funding. He can play with high-reaching theories of everything on the side, but he must produce something immediately useful to show he is worthy.

I hope this answers your question, even if it brings not very good news. I will be happy to answer more, should you need it.

Good luck!
Daniel

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: hi daniel,
thanks for the reply. and yes that wasn't such a good news after all!! but where do physicists get their salary from? who basically employs them? apart from those financial institutes and all? and while we are looking for the funding and all... and practically doing no work...who pays us??
i mean, i'm really very unhappy about the situation. seems as if no one in the world cares about anything other than money..and they want results to be used by the industry..and they don't care about who they are, where they came from, what's the universe about, what's beyond the universe?? i mean, i so badly want to be a theoretical physicist but the current situation makes me feel so unsecured, as to wether i'll be able to do actually what i want to do.....
i don't know when i'll start earning...not that i want to do just that but even earning some good money is important...  
life seems so uncertain....after getting into a field that's not taken up by many people...
but i can't imagine myself doing anything else except theoretical physics either...
but thanks anyway!! and please let me know who basically employs physicists...
thanks
shikhin

Answer
Hi Shikhin,
physicists of all sorts are employed by universities, or national (governmental) laboratories and academies of sciences, or by large industrial companies that have their own research team. The number of positions for theoretical physicists is highest at universities and in the nationals academies of sciences. At universities they earn their salary by teaching, while their scientific grants are used to cover the salaries of their underlings, mostly students, and the computation time on computer clusters.
At national academies people are primarily employed by the governments and while their time may be full-time research, in most places their work is scrutinized for some evident output. In case of theorists, the output is solely publications and their reputation as their work is so disconnected from applications. It is exactly them, the national governments, that are the main donors of funds for projects looking at "what is the universe about"... and even they have to somehow justify this expense in front of their voters (who in the whole are not interested in scientific progress by far as much as in getting paid without having to work at all).
National laboratories are mostly oriented toward experimental science - it is obvious from the name, theorists do not need laboratories do do their research :-). Theoretical institutes existing within them mostly employ theorists working in the field of materials - liquid or solid state, nanomaterials, organics... These then look for abstract laws in the plethora of data, make models, generate predictions and give them to next door experimentalists to test them. These are the theorists, who have the potential of finding out something that will be of practical importance - examples may be 60 years ago the designers of the first P-N semiconductor junctions and the theorists even earlier that discovered quantum tunneling. Less of a high-flyer than the "theory of everything", but no less demanding or rewarding.
If you look into history, you will discover that for centuries physicists were recruiting from the nobility, from wealthy social classes. They made discoveries, because their estates paid for their living and they could just do what they liked. Nowadays wealth is not accumulated by individuals so much, but by corporations and THEIR primary question, when giving money out, will always be "What do we get in return?" The chairs and councilmen of the moneymongers would loose their positions quickly, if they started following benefit of others instead of the one of their companies'. You said it yourself, it is important to earn a living somehow... and there is only a small step from that to "Money rules everything".
So, that is as much as I can write today, I am open to further discussion.
Cheers,
Daniel