The work and environment of the physicist yesterday, today, and tomorrow

The steady growth in understanding of the structure of matter and energy and of their interrelation that has resulted from the researches of physicists and of their predecessors among the natural philosophers, has been of increasing importance to mankind for the past few hundred years. However, until this century, there was small impact on society of the new knowledge obtained by these researches until very long after the new knowledge was obtained. Physicists were therefore remote from the scene of action, and the general public was indeed hardly conscious of them or of their profession. Their “action at a distance” permitted a remote and sheltered environment, sometimes characterized as an “ivory towered existence”.

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