Politzer's Nobel Prize lecture and physics as a career

I've been away on vacation, but it's time to start blogging again.

This evening I found two intriguing links in the recent entries of Sean Carroll's blog.

First, there is a link to the text of H. David Politzer's Nobel Prize lecture (posted by Politzer himself on his webpage and not on the Nobel Prize site).

The lecture is essentially the story behind how Politzer made his discovery (jointly with David Gross and Frank Wilczek) and the later work that established the veracity of the result. Politzer makes an interesting comment about theoretical physics being a "parasitic profession" and emphasizes the fiscal limitations on further exploration of physics beyond the standard model; he claims that we would need $10^22 to study grand unification. The lecture itself is concise and well-written; my only complaint is the frequent appearance of jargon that I myself confess to not understanding.

Second, Sean Carroll links to an essay called "Don't Become a Scientist!" written by Jonathan Katz at Washington University. He writes of how there is a scarcity of jobs, no grants, poor pay, etc -- creating a situation so dismal that young people should not pursue a career in scientific academia. This is an issue that I believe most young scientists like myself are aware of, but so painful that we try to move it to the back of our minds. (Feigned) ignorance, after all, is bliss. Clearly many people don't listen to the advice of people like Katz, otherwise we wouldn't have this problem.

The more disturbing side of the issue (mentioned by Katz in the essay) I find is that the effort-payoff ratio may be so great that talented people are turned away. One of my undergraduate professors claimed that the talent pool he encounters in faculty job searches is much thinner than in the past. As an example, he pointed to Russia, the birthplace of many famous theoretical physicists (most notably Landau). He claimed that there are hardly any more talented theoretical physicists coming out of Russia because with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, bright young people have many other possibilities. I think there is general agreement among scientists that interest in physics has dropped off considerably in the last few decades due to the decrease in funding and the rise of life sciences (biology, neuroscience, etc.). In a recent American Physical Society newsletter, a physicist rightly pointed out that it is grossly misleading to tell women and minorities that they should do physics because there won't be enough people to fill job slots in the future. Yet this is a common argument advanced by many women science interest groups. Rather it should be the aim of all physicists to inspire the bright students to join the field. Somehow we need to both convince them that physics is worth doing and fix the system to improve the average physicist's quality of life. The former has a clear solution in K-12 science outreach programs and inspiring classroom teaching. I won't comment on the latter as I know very little of the burearcracy behind academia and grants.