Finding one’s place in physics

Weinberg replies: I am grateful to Lance Nizami and Elroy LaCasce for their comments. My essay and the talk on which it was based dealt only with the problems confronting young theorists today and in the past in doing their research, but perhaps I should add a few words on the problems that physicists face and have faced in seeking an academic career.

It never has been easy. In the 1950s, as now, physics doctoral graduates generally started as postdocs, hoping to move on to a tenure-track position at a good university. Only one assistant professorship was opening up in the physics department at Columbia University when I was a postdoc there. I didn’t get it, and went off to the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory for a second postdoc job. It was no injustice that Columbia chose my friend, the late Gary Feinberg, rather than me; at that time, he had done more important research.

In my experience, now as in the past, young theorists who write interesting papers on important subjects generally do wind up with good academic jobs. Graduate work in a first-rate physics department certainly helps one to get started in research, but the important thing is the research you do, not the university that grants your PhD. Physics departments do unfortunately produce many doctoral graduates who will not find success in their research, but this is because we have no way to tell in advance who can do good work after they leave graduate school. The process may seem callous, but how can we tell a young physicist not to try?