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Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery

theguardian.com

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Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery

#91

Post by jononor »

jononor wrote: post #81
wslh wrote: post #61

I read that she received an honorary PhD but surely she fully deserve just a "PhD". Is this a UK thing? Could you in the US or elsewhere have a PhD on the merits of your work (a thesis, a discovery, etc) without spending time in the courses?

Courses is a very minimal part. The thesis is practically all of it. And standard these days in most fields is that it is a collection of published papers, with intro and outro. There is also a Dr.Philos, where one has done the work independently of a university, and they evaluate the thesis only. It is rare and very difficult though.

EDIT: in Norway

Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery

#92

Post by lumost »

seanhunter wrote: post #50
lumost wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that this also depends on field. CS has been hot for a long time now, it's also not extremely expensive to make a dent - or particularly unlikely. In Physics, we graduate an order of magnitude more Phds than there are posts for Phds. There are few remunerative fields which hire Phd physicists.

High paying jobs in finance are stuffed with physics phds.

While somewhat true, I suspect that the path for these phds was both more error prone and harder than alternative pathways to the same position. My understanding is that the use of physics Phds for this role has fallen over the years as financial engineering and quantitative finance have evolved.

You see similar patterns with Physics Phds in AI teams. You are likely to encounter one over your career, but it's not typical.

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