Interesting that The Guardian is leading the way in finally having non-gendered headlines, i.e. not saying "Female physicist recognized 75 years after discovery" or "Rosemary Fowler, 98-year old physicist, recognized 75 years after discovery".
This will hopefully pave the way for truer equality in that the most common reaction reading this headline would probably be "oh no, why has this physicist not gotten the recognition" rather than the latter, which is more polarising -- it leads to either "outrageous, look here is one more neglected woman!" or "here we go, one more feminist complaint".
Nah, probably wasn't them as there was a Press Association headline being syndicated around for a few days with the same format (so good on Press Association for that)
I'm sorry you told me, I'd have never known. I didn't click on the story because I didn't want to read about a 98 yo who calls themselves a physicist and doesn't have a PhD. Yes, I'm sure there have been some, but I would have already heard of them if it was a good story.
Although Sabine's video is more about today's academia money/paper mill incentives, she mentions the more eternal work/family-life balance for women that also seems to have been determinative for Rosemary Fowler (the subject of the article).
Every person I know with a PhD now in their 40s and 50s (7 people) doesn’t have a family and wished they did and didn’t have a PhD. I’d love to see a study on that.
I’m never bothered because it looked like too much effort for little money.
This is the danger of anecdotes, they can lead to bias. I have a PhD and I had my first child at 28. Almost all of my colleagues have families and children, except for the one person who was unable to attract a suitable mate (and not for lack of trying). Sometimes very bright people have trouble attracting an equivalent person. The pool is that much smaller and other factors (socioeconomic, culture) still play a role as per other relationships.
> This is the danger of anecdotes, they can lead to bias.
Your own story is also a dangerous anecdote. Without the context, it's pointless to talk about how amazing your Ph.D. experience was. Study engineering or quantitative marketing? Most likely miserable. Study humanities? Probably happier.
It's as latexr said, my counterfactual anecdote holds as much water as the OP's. That's the point. Neither forms a verifiable statement of fact.
Regarding happiness or a Ph.D. being an amazing experience, I didn't say a word about any of that. Those seem to be some very strong assumptions around marriage/kids = happiness or engineering/marketing = misery that you're making.
I don’t think the person you’re replying to is implying their anecdotes are more valid, but that all anecdotes can be contradicted by opposing anecdotes and thus aren’t enough to make sweeping statements.
It is indeed incredibly stupid if the reason why you didn't find a suitable partner is because you didn't want to lower your PhD standard (or academic requirements as if that has anything to do with stable love). Having a PhD doesn't mean you're generally bright, it just means you can do research in some narrow field.
I think it's implied that there is some fuzziness in the matching, not precision to the 7th decimal of some objective test or something. That said I agree it certainly isn't a requirement to be similar in specific attributes to get married. Perhaps somewhat common though.
I left it ambiguous on purpose, as equivalent could mean many things, someone at least as accomplished, at least as wealthy, or at least as considerate... the list it goes on. It all depends on what that person is looking for. Seems silly to judge which attributes are important for what is a deeply personal choice with serious life implications.
that makes sense but it still seems like there is an imbalance on expectations.
It reads as they're great and there's not a lot of people as great as they are when in reality it's probably more like the overlap between the set of people they desire and the set of people that desires them is impossibly narrow. This sounds like a tough personal problem that they can 100% work through by looking in the mirror and working on themselves.
I'm too great to ever find someone as great as me is frankly a piss poor attitude and outlook on life and I feel really bad for them to be stuck like that.
Statistically speaking, you're right, but it's still possible (especially in our brave new world) to have standards that can't suffer anymore compromise before losing the meaning of "standard" itself.
You could also simply have bad luck compounding the issue. Stuff any amount of effort or masquerade won't fix, like being a short man (inb4 "I know this small guy that...").
Do all seven work at the same place? The PhDs I know mostly work a M-W/9-5 schedule with the occasional late night or weekend day when it's crunch time for a conference deadline. Plenty of time left for family, and they all have families. But that's dependent on departmental culture, and there can be a lot of variance.
I suspect that this also depends on field. CS has been hot for a long time now, it's also not extremely expensive to make a dent - or particularly unlikely. In Physics, we graduate an order of magnitude more Phds than there are posts for Phds. There are few remunerative fields which hire Phd physicists.
While somewhat true, I suspect that the path for these phds was both more error prone and harder than alternative pathways to the same position. My understanding is that the use of physics Phds for this role has fallen over the years as financial engineering and quantitative finance have evolved.
You see similar patterns with Physics Phds in AI teams. You are likely to encounter one over your career, but it's not typical.
I knew a lot of physics (and other) PhD's when I worked in finance but I always wondered if they would have chosen to go into that field if they knew that's where they'd most likely end up.
Sure, but I was just giving a counterexample from my personal experience for the claim that their aren't many good paying jobs for Physics PhDs. In my career I have come across a weirdly large number of physics phds in very lucrative roles and that covers various fields, finance, in the software/tech industry (especially in data analysis type roles) and other places.
> In Physics, we graduate an order of magnitude more Phds than there are posts for Phds. There are few remunerative fields which hire Phd physicists.
IIRC, that's even worse in the humanities in both regards.
I'd kind of think doing a career change would be easier for a Phd physicist, because they could benefit from stereotypes especially if they switch into some kind of quantitative or math-y field.
My understanding is that, as you say, Physics PhDs tend to have pretty decent paths into computing or math stuff. It's hard to be a physicist these days without being able to write some code in at least a scripting language, so fields like data science can fit them well.
The challenge is probably in finding pure physics research positions in a specific specialization.
I've also heard quite a few people saying that their PhD was one of the best times of their life, because of how free they were to pursue things they found interesting (many of them have also settled down with a family, as well). Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
FWIW, I finished a physics PhD 15 or so years ago, and 2/3rds or so of the people in the program with me have are married, and most of those couples have children.
There are certainly challenges to having a family while pursing a PhD, but they're not prohibitive, and there are advantages as well (flexible work schedule, Universities often have a lot of programs for employees with children).
From the number of published articles, it seems your wife was in STEM? Engineering Ph.D.s publish a lot of papers but they contribute little to each, because there are often tens of co-authors. Not to downplay your wife's achievement, but pointing out #papers is not that informative.
Come on! 20 publications in STEM by age 28 is massively impressive regardless of field. Admittedly it's not the US, but I've found one study that suggests a publication rate of 0.52 article equivalents per year for women PhD students in engineering and technology: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175115771...
This doesn't match my observations. Both when I was in academia and now in industry, I see lots and lots of PhDs with kids (often dual-PhD families). It would have been a lot more challenging if I'd stayed in academia (I live in the pricey Bay Area).
Seems like these folks are in academia or have been in academia until very recently? Academic lifestyle tends to take its toll, especially if you move every n years. But even then your sample seems a bit extreme...
Its hard to see how people who switch to industry relatively soon can be penalized so much (and there are a lot of people like that).
There is a joke among scientists that choosing the career path will cost you your firstborn. It would be nice to quantify this but it is hard to. Anecdotally, main issue is financial stability so people with wealthy backgrounds or supportive (by time investment) families have a much easier time navigating this.
I would be surprised if someone did the study and didn't find a delay till first-born child born when compared to similar people (SES background, abilities, etc) that went down the business/finance route.
Edit:typo
Most of the people with the PhD I know that have a family either abandoned the "line of work" (e.g, mathematics PhD but did computer programming) or was a teacher/professor.
I know a PhD specialising in applying ml algorithms to different markets, mostly energy-related.
Married, 3 kids, good position In a fund, same focus as his phd.
He was very, very lucky, without even realising it to this day. His wife took most of the hit, with him permanently working, or teaching, or something, and her taking care of thr rest of their life, kids included.
On the specialisation side. He never went the "pursue a dream even with no money" way. It was more about picking things he was good at, and also making sure the choice included sellable skills.
The number of these you'll find, especially in teaching, is amazingly high.
The "absent-minded professor backed by his down-to-earth wife" is a trope but a common one (and, to be fair, it's not always a man who's absent minded!).
The majority of the people I know who have PhDs have families with children by 30-35.
My experience in grad school is that there are two different classes of people pursuing PhDs:
- people whose parents have MSs or PhDs, who had guidance from a very early age, who have been advised the entire way through and are able to complete their PhDs by age 25-28
- people whose parents don't have advanced degrees, who are at a pretty severe disadvantage, who don't know how to start preparing for grad school applications during sophomore year of undergrad, who don't know how to pick a decent advisor, who don't know how to organize their own funding which provides some level of research independence and the ability to focus on completing their degree instead of worshipping their advisor, and these people are much more likely to take 6,7,8+ years to complete their PhD if they complete it at all
But that's not really relevant to this story. This is an article about a woman who dropped out of her PhD program to have kids, and was given an honorary degree decades later because the work she did complete was groundbreaking.
> who don't know how to start preparing for grad school applications during sophomore year of undergrad
That was me. I always assumed I'd go to grad school because that's just what was done; I never realized that my parents' meeting in grad school meant they worked normal people jobs for the better part of a decade before continuing their educations.
Most of the people with PhDs in that age group I know are married and often talk excitedly about what activities they recently did with their kids. Many are married to other people with PhDs, and their kids also seem to intend to go for PhDs.
The early 30s postdocs seem to mostly be single though, so maybe they'll face that in their 40s and 50s.
About half the PhDs I know have families and are happy with their career choice (challenging and rewarding work). You’re casting unfounded judgement IMHO.
I don't see how going for a PhD limits one's family life.
Sure one could earn more money for less work in the industry, but being a PhD student is still a rather cushy job earning decent money compared to a lot of physical jobs out there. Also nobody cares at which time of the day/week you do your work, which is nice in times where other jobs might prefer to have your ass in an office.
> I don't see how going for a PhD limits one's family life.
Only one way to find out! It limits your family/friends/sex/fun life because the work load is a lot, there are no official "work hours" (so you end up working on weekends, at nights, when others are sleeping, when others go to parties, etc.), you get paid less than people who work in industry even though your work is as difficult (if not more) than theirs (think about the ML stuff Ph.D.s do vs. engineers in companies), you still have to deal with shitty politics in the department, etc.
yeah, I'm on the verge of finding out. Got an offer, but damn it's a big decision to make.
Having supporting parents around to help with childcare (no kids yet, but 4 years is a long time) and financials is a big plus. Also being in Europe where the job market looks dire and industry only pay like 20% more is a major draw towards the PhD.
As someone who's almost done with his Ph.D., I wouldn't recommend it. Although I did mine in the US. European universities are different in some ways (e.g., I've heard they don't require Ph.D.s to do TA work, which is nice).
I wouldn't say TA work is not required. It all depends where the funding for the position is coming from. If the university is funding it without any extra grants or cooperations, TA work is definitely a huge part of being a PhD-student.
> The year after the discovery, Fowler left university having published her discovery in three academic papers.
Back in the days where two papers in nature wasn’t enough to to instantly get you a PhD I guess! Hopefully she was kept in the loop by her husband (fellow physicist) so she could feel rewarded even in real time.
In the US a PhD has many pantronizing requirements, but in the UK, where Fowler is, is much more mature, usually only requiring a thesis.
But with the war and kids and life, Fowler may have felt there was no need to get a PhD since she didn't plan to return to work as a professional physicist.
Degrees only matter if external pressure demands it.
I'm trying to picture her as a young inquisitive woman, rising to a research challenge and working day/night on the discovery.
But when you see them so old and decrepit, it really hits home just how terrible ageing truly is. It robbed this woman of her vigour. I can't actually imagine the inquisitive expression she must have had on her face during her peak.
I read that she received an honorary PhD but surely she fully deserve just a "PhD". Is this a UK thing? Could you in the US or elsewhere have a PhD on the merits of your work (a thesis, a discovery, etc) without spending time in the courses?
I can't speak for every institution (and every department within), but at least in mine (in the US), there were pretty specific rules and requirements around awarding a PhD, involving coursework, qualifiers, proposals, the thesis and its defense. Seems unlikely that this could be easily circumvented for this type of situation.
Courses is a very minimal part. The thesis is practically all of it. And standard these days in most fields is that it is a collection of published papers, with intro and outro. There is also a Dr.Philos, where one has done the work independently of a university, and they evaluate the thesis only. It is rare and very difficult though.
This will hopefully pave the way for truer equality in that the most common reaction reading this headline would probably be "oh no, why has this physicist not gotten the recognition" rather than the latter, which is more polarising -- it leads to either "outrageous, look here is one more neglected woman!" or "here we go, one more feminist complaint".