the.com/scientist careers
a decade of training so you can be surprised by nature for a living, if the grant gods allow.
means the professional path of doing research for a living, usually starting in a lab and ending in either tenure, industry, or a thoughtful career change.
from the word scientist was coined in 1833 by william whewell, replacing natural philosopher because chemistry and physics had gotten too specialized for one polite label to cover.
pipeline shapepyramid: many phds, few professorships
real bottleneckfunding, not talent, most years
industry pays morebut academia keeps the myth alive
postdoc purgatorycan last five to ten years easily
for instance
marie curie — two nobel prizes, one in physics 1903, one in chemistry 1911
katalin kariko — demoted at penn, later won 2023 nobel for mrna work
charles darwin — unpaid naturalist on the beagle for five years, 1831 to 1836
jennifer doudna — crispr co-inventor, nobel 2020, also cofounded biotech firms