Physicists in industry are abandoning the use of laboratory notebooks and R&D managers are wary of relationships with academia, according to a forthcoming American Institute of Physics report.
From 2002 to 2007, Joe Anderson and his associates at AIP’s Center for History of Physics interviewed more than 120 R&D managers, senior bench physicists, and records managers at 15 US-based companies from among the 27 that employ about half of all physicists in the corporate sector. Findings from the History of Physicists in Industry (HOPI) project report, which will be available in September, showed that more than half of the physicists who graduated with PhDs from US universities in the late 1990s chose industry over academic appointments (see Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 60 4 2007 28 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2731964 April 2007, page 28 ). The study also tracked record-keeping practices and communication patterns of industrial physicists as well as business restructuring...