Why I am not an economist

I have been a subscriber to the Economist on three continents for three decades—first as a graduate student at Cambridge University in the UK; next as a postdoc at Japan’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science; now as Physics Today‘s online editor in College Park, Maryland.

Since its foundation in 1843, the newspaper (as the weekly magazine insists on calling itself) has offered analysis and opinion from a viewpoint of economic and social liberalism. I value the Economist‘s wide geographical coverage and pragmatic defense of individual freedom. I also enjoy its quirkily allusive headlines (“Dead or just resting?,” last week’s report about Germany’s embattled Free Democratic Party, refers to the “Dead Parrot Sketch” from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, in case you didn’t know).

True to its name, the newspaper covers economics, and over the years, I’ve become more and more interested in the subject. Far from being the dismal science, a label coined by historian Thomas Carlyle in 1849, economics is mathematically rich like physics, but unlike physics, it incorporates psychology, politics, geography, and other fields of study in which human factors are integral.

Indeed, such is my fondness for economics that I’ve wondered why I didn’t become an economist myself. The answer, unfortunately, is that I never really had the chance.

A child’s education in Wales

I went to local schools in a small town in North Wales called Conwy in Welsh and Conway in English. Although that part of the UK is among the poorest, the education I received was excellent. By the time I left for university in 1981, the academic subjects I’d studied comprised biology, chemistry, English, French, geography, German, history, Latin, mathematics, physics, and Welsh.

But I didn’t study economics. My high school, Ysgol Aberconwy , didn’t offer—and still doesn’t offer—a course in economics. My chance of encountering the subject at the next stage of my education—studying physics for a bachelor’s degree at Imperial College London—was not zero, but it was low. Like other universities in England and Wales, Imperial College has three-year degree programs that specialize in one subject.

I don’t regret the economics path not taken. I have had, and continue to have, a fulfilling life in physics. But in retrospect, I realize now more than ever how important public outreach is. For my small high school, an economics teacher is a luxury. And according to a 2010 study by Susan White and Casey Langer Tesfaye of the Statistical Research Center at the American Institute of Physics (which publishes Physics Today), physics is a luxury in the smallest US high schools. If students in such schools are to find out about the attractions of economics, physics, and other rare subjects, acts of outreach have to take place there.

Those acts could be talks by visiting physicists. If you’d like to be one of them, but aren’t sure where to start, check out these outreach resources from the American Physical Society. And for inspiration, read Nathan Sanders and Dan Gifford’s Points of View article “How to succeed at engaging the public’s interest in science ”.