Lee Smolin’s piece “Why No ‘New Einstein’?” certainly raised a variety of reactions. I agree with Smolin that scientific progress in physics is hindered by current US hiring and funding practices. A number of the letters published in the January 2006 issue rallied around this idea. However, I was surprised that no one mentioned how those practices become a cycle that squelches creative scientific ideas not only of faculty but also of graduate students.
Many promising physics graduate students I knew were shut out of following their dreams of PhDs in physics, even though they were creative and intelligent problem solvers. Most are no longer working in physics. Could one of those students have been another Einstein? We’ll never know.
I have read numerous articles in Physics Today about the woes of low undergraduate and graduate enrollment in physics. As Smolin says, the situation is created by physics faculty and by the culture that has developed in physics departments.
The letter from Peter Thejll nearly hit the problem on the head, I believe. He wrote that physics PhD students in Denmark “are generally treated like employees.” If you read the obituaries in Physics Today, you will notice that many of the older physicists earned their PhDs less than 5 years after their bachelor’s degrees. But today’s PhD candidates aren’t nearly that lucky. They are looking at a sentence of 7 to 10 years as physics graduate students. They are a source of cheap labor, and they need to remain in their advisers’ and departments’ good graces so they can complete their long-sought-after PhDs. Even if these students are retained, how much creativity has been crushed out of them as they have learned how to play the game of survival in academia? And if they become faculty members, do they perpetuate the cycle for their own survival?