Minorities in physics

African Americans and Hispanics accounted for 2.1% and 3.2%, respectively, of US physics faculty members in 2012 but 13% and 17% of the country’s population. Two recent reports by the Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics look at physics trends for underrepresented minorities among faculty and recent physics bachelor’s recipients.

Across all disciplines in 2009, African Americans made up 6.6% of faculty and Hispanics 4%. For comparison, Asians—who are not underrepresented in physics—made up 6% of all faculty, and whites 75%.

From 2004 to 2012, the number of African American physics faculty members grew 11% to a total of 190. The number of Hispanic physics faculty members grew 29% to 288. The representation among faculty is similar to that for new doctoral recipients in physics.

In 2012 two-thirds of US physics departments (495 out of 746) had neither African American nor Hispanic faculty members, while 27 departments employed members of both groups.

At the undergraduate level, Hispanics are still underrepresented in the physical sciences, but their numbers are growing fast. From 2002 to 2012, the physical sciences saw a 47% increase in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded; among Hispanics, that rise was 78%. Across all fields in the US over that period, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded grew 38% to more than 1.8 million; among Hispanics that growth was 85%. In 2012, Hispanics earned 342 out of 6177 bachelor’s degrees (5.5%) conferred in physics.

For more on these trends, see African Americans & Hispanics among Physics & Astronomy Faculty and Hispanic Participation among Bachelor’s in Physical Sciences and Engineering. The reports are available at http://aip.org/statistics/minorities .