The Scientist

It has been just over five years since Frank Press, a geophysicist of international renown and former science adviser to President Jimmy Carter, was installed as 19th president of the National Academy of Sciences. Press came to the presidency of the 1,800-member Academy with an imposing agenda: to revamp the report-writing process of the National Research Council, to cut personnel and overhead costs, to raise private capital for both the Academy endowment and for special projects, and to dissemi

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The typical U.S. scientist is a white male college professor of around 50 who juggles teaching and research, has been in his job a decade or more, and earns between $50,000 and $60,000 a year, according to a survey of almost 700 researchers undertaken by THE SCIENTIST. His salary accounts for almost all of his income, although he makes a little extra from such activities as consulting, honoraria, writing and, in one case, growing grapes. His employer underwrites a long vacation, sick leave and p

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Almost since I can remember, my ambition was to be a physicist. My parents had both studied physics and worked for a short time in the Cavendish Laboratory, and, although neither made a career in science, I was brought up knowing about physics. At both preparatory and secondary schools, however, my most inspiring teachers taught mathematics, and I left school with a maths scholarship to Cambridge and the ambition to work on quantum theory. That was in 1923, when Sommerfeld and others were still

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