Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
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Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
#2A perhaps relevant Sabine Hossenfelder video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8
Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
#3Well deserved.
Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
#4> The year after the discovery, Fowler left university having published her discovery in three academic papers.
Back in the days where two papers in nature wasn’t enough to to instantly get you a PhD I guess! Hopefully she was kept in the loop by her husband (fellow physicist) so she could feel rewarded even in real time.
Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
#5Every person I know with a PhD now in their 40s and 50s (7 people) doesn’t have a family and wished they did and didn’t have a PhD. I’d love to see a study on that.
I’m never bothered because it looked like too much effort for little money.
Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
#6Every person I know with a PhD now in their 40s and 50s (7 people) doesn’t have a family and wished they did and didn’t have a PhD. I’d love to see a study on that. I’m never bothered because it looked like too much effort for little money.
You mean divorced or never married?
Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
#7Every person I know with a PhD now in their 40s and 50s (7 people) doesn’t have a family and wished they did and didn’t have a PhD. I’d love to see a study on that. I’m never bothered because it looked like too much effort for little money.
Most of the people with the PhD I know that have a family either abandoned the "line of work" (e.g, mathematics PhD but did computer programming) or was a teacher/professor.
Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
#8Every person I know with a PhD now in their 40s and 50s (7 people) doesn’t have a family and wished they did and didn’t have a PhD. I’d love to see a study on that. I’m never bothered because it looked like too much effort for little money.
Do all seven work at the same place? The PhDs I know mostly work a M-W/9-5 schedule with the occasional late night or weekend day when it's crunch time for a conference deadline. Plenty of time left for family, and they all have families. But that's dependent on departmental culture, and there can be a lot of variance.
Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
#9Every person I know with a PhD now in their 40s and 50s (7 people) doesn’t have a family and wished they did and didn’t have a PhD. I’d love to see a study on that. I’m never bothered because it looked like too much effort for little money.
I've also heard quite a few people saying that their PhD was one of the best times of their life, because of how free they were to pursue things they found interesting (many of them have also settled down with a family, as well). Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Re: Physicist, 98, honoured with doctorate 75 years after groundbreaking discovery
#10Every person I know with a PhD now in their 40s and 50s (7 people) doesn’t have a family and wished they did and didn’t have a PhD. I’d love to see a study on that. I’m never bothered because it looked like too much effort for little money.
This is the danger of anecdotes, they can lead to bias. I have a PhD and I had my first child at 28. Almost all of my colleagues have families and children, except for the one person who was unable to attract a suitable mate (and not for lack of trying). Sometimes very bright people have trouble attracting an equivalent person. The pool is that much smaller and other factors (socioeconomic, culture) still play a role as per other relationships.