Mixed Reactions to ‘No New Einstein’

I have a few things to add to Lee Smolin’s reasons why no new Einsteins are coming forth today. Today’s scientists are jet-setting, grant-swinging, favor-trading hustlers looking for civil servants who will provide them with a pipeline into the US Treasury. Not only do they get peer pressure to behave this way, they also get arm-twisting from the academic bureaucracy that wants to get its 50% to pay for its bloated overhead. You can’t be a used-car salesman and have deep thoughts about the structure of the universe at the same time. You’ve got to move product—in the case of scientists it’s reports and journal publications—and keep moving it even after tenure removes some of the pressure. As for the assorted Beltway Bandits (private industries fulfilling government contract work), some of whom are quite talented, there is no tenure, only the next contract.

Big Al Einstein was not like that. His personal life may have left some things to be desired, but he had professional integrity. Even Ezra Pound had something good to say about him. These days Einstein would be teaching at a third-rate local college in a lower-echelon state university system, if he got an academic position at all. Or he might wind up in a cubicle at some agency that serves as the employer-of-last-resort for physics PhDs. He might even be selling minivans.

One thing I regret about my career at the National Geodetic Survey is that I did not have my hand on the spigot of a pipe leading to the Treasury. Those who did had lots of friends doing them lots of favors, and got to see the world at taxpayer’s expense. Everyone else counted the days until retirement.