The American Scene; Job Hor: Physics

Tonight, below in the low 30s, tomorrow cloudy a little colder with chance of some rain and a high in the 40s. Temperature right now in Chicago, 34 degrees midway, 36 along the lakefront. This is WMAQ and WMAQ FM and BC in Chicago at 7 o 'clock. The American scene, a series of pre -recorded programs providing a closer look at those things which form our contemporary society. Produced by the Illinois Institute of Technology and Cooperation with WMAQ, the discussion today will consider job horizons in physics. Now here's our host, Don Anderson. Good morning and welcome to the American scene. My name is Don Anderson. Today we're going to scan the job horizon in the field of physics, one of the fastest growing scientific professions in America today. The scientist is today's pioneer. He is the one who explores the vast areas of the unknown who is

constantly working to expand the frontiers of knowledge. The scientist is also at the forefront of the dynamic growth of many of our industries. The scientist works in a world of excitement, a world of opportunities, good jobs, good pay, and an important share in America's progress. Generally speaking, science may be divided into two major categories. The first is Technology Center or Applied Research. Devoted to the military, to space, to medicine, to industrial progress. The second is the so -called Pure Science or Basic Research. Devoted not to material needs or applications, but to the asking of questions simply to find the answers. And both are dependent on the other for information and techniques. Research above all is the search for knowledge about nature. The physicist is primarily concerned with energy, with the structure of matter, and with the relationship between energy and matter. He investigates the fundamental laws of nature. Physics is a broad field. It involves such things as mechanics, optics, acoustics,

electronics, nuclear physics, solid state physics, and many others. It is a field with new branches continually emerging, cryogenics, plasma physics, ultrasonic. It is a field with developing specialties related to other sciences, geophysics, biophysics, and astrophysics. Within this important and rapidly growing field, scientific talent is a scarce resource. In industry, in government, in the university, the train physicist is in great demand. And as in so many other fields, there will probably be a particular demand for the physicist with a PhD degree, qualified to teach advanced physics, and qualified to do high -level research and development work. There are positions available as well for the physicist with the bachelor's degree and with the master's degree, but the more education, the better. The person going on for the doctoral degree may be delaying his earning days, but the delay will pay off in better jobs and better income later. To help us understand the scope of career opportunities available in the field of physics, I

am pleased to welcome this morning Mrs. Catherine O 'Brien, research physicist at the IIT Research Institute, and Dr. Robert Eston, assistant professor of physics at IIT. Thank you very much for coming this morning. And the introduction seems to have painted a rather glowing picture of the field of physics. Is this really such a good field to enter? Well, as far as a job opportunity goes, I think that it's safe to say the more physicists that we have now, the more physicists we are going to need in the future. Dr. Eston? Well, I think certainly this is true physics as with all the sciences has been growing rapidly. Over the past 10 years, if you want to look at that time scale of the past 50 or 60 years, if you want to look at that way over the past 300, if you want to look at it that way, it's continually growing. Well, physics is an old word and old definition of a field of knowledge. What is a

physicist? What is he interested in? What does he do? That's a rather involved question. I think a physicist is interested in the laws of nature in describing and finding out what they are. Of course, this includes a lot of the other sciences. And chemists certainly does that. And so does the biologist. It's a matter of what level. And in a larger sense, perhaps it's very hard to distinguish between them. And on the other hand, it's quite obvious in many ways that there is a difference. The physicist, I think, tries to understand the simplest and sometimes the most difficult. In many ways, the chemist has the easier job, maybe it's not easy, of having the complicated molecular business that goes on. And then the biologist has perhaps the most complicated of all. They're all science. The physicist is dealing with in many ways the simplest. Yes, and I think, too, in this area of

specialization, this era of specialization that we are into now, we tend to draw artificial lines between the sciences. And you'll find a physical chemist and a chemical physicist doing much the same work so that it's in large part an artificial but very necessary distinction. Generally speaking, physicists are not interested in the composition of matter. Are they interested more in how it works, how it reacts under various conditions? Some of them are. Physical chemist is. Well, again, what name you call him is not really important. There's a branch of physics, chemical physics, which is very active, as Kathy's mentioned. There's a group of chemists called physical chemists and chemical physicists. And I can't remember which is which. I don't think they can either, because some of the same people work in both fields and publish, at least in both journals, one American Chemical Society, so I guess they're chemists. The other

American Physical Society, so I guess they're physicists. Well, it depends on where they got the degree, what the degree was in, and what their primary interest is. I suppose as to what area they would have been. And really, it doesn't matter too much, because it's the subject and the content of your work, really, which is going to go over no matter where you classify it as far as journals go, or degrees, or anything else. It's the subject matter that will determine. You had mentioned earlier before the program that physics was at one time the word that covered all of the natural sciences. Yes, the philosophers made a very big point of making a distinction between what is philosophy and what is science, what is experimental knowledge, what is rational or speculative knowledge, and which is higher as far as what draws on the intellect and this type of thing. But at one time they just lumped all of natural science together and called it physics.

And then as knowledge increased in the natural sciences, they have to label specialties and areas with a different name. Precisely, mainly because people wanted to be individualists, and sometimes I chemist I don't think would like being called a physicist to walk in this type of thing. We all like this type of labeling, I think. Is a physicist primarily interested in research? Is this his major function as a career? No, I don't think so. I think that there is a lot of emphasis being put on it today because of our space efforts and our defense work. But if we did not have these contracts and this need to go further in science, push the frontier back, I think that the physicists would definitely have a very good place in industry today in technology, improving our needs. Couldn't do without him there either. The physicist in industry today is quite important undoubtedly. Of course the physicist existed before

there was the great need for physicist in industry and interestingly enough that really dates back not too far before the Second World War. At which time most physicists were also actively engaged in teaching at one level or another. They are also working on some of their own interests, their research endeavors. It's only World War II that's made the physicist the professional industrial research physicist come into his own. Much as I guess the industrial chemist did World War I. Before that time a chemist was also probably a teacher and couldn't have been a chemist pretty well without being. Yes and to the technology has advanced to the point where you almost need, well you do need a man on your staff and any industrial firm who can understand and translate these new developments into workable routine type jobs. Into applications for that particular industry and this brings up the difference between, as I mentioned in the introduction, pure

science or basic research and the technology center deployed research. Could you discuss that a little bit and give us a little clearer picture on it? Well the pure versus applied physicist, very much like the chemist versus the physicist, they're very real distinctions in general. And yet to make the specific distinction in particular becomes extremely difficult. The spectrum represents an entire range from the very, very pure physicist who was not at least interested in what use, what he may be doing, may ever have. He's interested in curiously, well his curiosity, answering the questions which puzzle him about the world. On the other extreme, the applied physicist emerging certainly into the whole realm of technology and to engineering is interested in the application of scientific principles for our world. And while the distinction certainly exists as I say, the definite

specification of an individual is kind of hard. The same individual can very well, I think, be one or the other. Certainly at one time he may be a pure physicist, another time he may be applied or vice versa. And even at times he may be doing both very close to simultaneously. We mentioned a whole number of names for various fields within physics. Let's take optics, which you are in, Kathy. Are there physicists doing pure research in optics and applied research as well? Or does the pure researcher kind of cross over the lines of the division? Oh, definitely, it's a very flexible type thing depending upon, well, the needs of his work, his theoretical work might need an example. Something that would appear rather elementary and routine

after it's been done once. But in this instance you would probably call him an applied optical physicist, which is a lot of words for meaning that he is dancing. He wants to satisfy his curiosity about the world. And in doing so it is usually necessary to translate the satisfaction into a demonstration. Because after all that is the purpose of a physicist is to explain why nature does what it does. And you have to experiment and show people it is not sufficient to put equations on a sheet of paper. You must have examples. So in this case every theoretical physicist must at some time apply his theory or else have people or close associates that will do this for him. I only question one word that explains a private attitude of myself and a few of my colleagues will maintain. We never explain anything. We describe it.

But of course it's a matter of words perhaps more than it is. Let's talk about the education required. We've indicated that there are several levels of work in the world of physics. What about education requirements to get into the field? Well, I think that anyone who is seriously considering a career in physics should intend to go on and get his PhD. Without any qualification I'd say that this would be a must in the future. That you just have to have that our knowledge is evolving so rapidly at such a pace that unless you have your PhD almost as a crutch. Because that's what it is once you get out to lean back on so that you can understand these articles. You can converse with your colleagues. You can go to symposium. These things and get something out of it that is meaningful. You're going to have to get your PhD. It sounds like you have to specialize. Get

your specialty and specialize fully in it. I would disagree only to the extent that again it depends where you're going to wind up, what you're going to wind up doing. You can very well be doing a number of certainly very useful things. And the question of whether you're a physicist or not is not really important. Certainly the more you are in the realm of pure physics, the farther your needle as it were is pointing in that direction, the more your education has to be. And really most pure physicists with very few exceptions would certainly have the PhD. On the other hand, in the realm of applied physics, which drifts over into the realm of certainly applied technology engineering, there are many physicists working with only bachelor's degrees, let's say, in physics who are doing a very good job. There's a question of whether they're a physicist or not. And of course you can dispute this. But they are certainly useful with the bachelor's degree in physics. I don't know, I think I take issue to that in a way because you, I think one factor in thinking this way that you need a PhD and most pure physicists have one,

is that for a long time that's all we had, we're pure physicists. And so we've already established the tradition of a PhD. These were the people, the thinkers of the people who contemplate that went on to higher education. But now we're in an age where it's the people that do, maybe with their hands or through examples, and apply their knowledge that are coming to the forefront. And in order to apply your knowledge well to use of this, as I stated before, rapidly developing technology, you're, the applied people are going to need that PhD. Certainly many of them are. And again, it's a matter of what do you mean by investigation? There is only one person in a generation who comes along with fantastic ideas. And such geniuses are not really trained, although training certainly helps. On the other hand, there are those who will often follow. Pushing back the boundaries of knowledge as the usual description

of research, push back the boundaries of very dramatic, doesn't necessarily be knocking over the brick walls and opening whole new vistas. Sometimes it's a matter of pushing it away or chipping away a brick or sliding the brick just a little bit. And of course the better a background you have, and PhD certainly is indicative of having a stronger background in the field, the better able you are to do some really unusual things. I doubt if a Nobel Prize winner in physics within the next decade or probably next hundred years will be one who doesn't have a PhD in physics. Although it's interesting to note, Nobel Prize does not represent necessarily pure physics. And the transistor for which Shockley and his associates got the Nobel Prize not too long ago, represented a remarkable instance where a pure and applied physics went almost side by side from the development of the pure physics underlying it to the development of the transistor. Which is applied as any device we see today. Which is a good example of what Kathy was saying. They build the demonstration of the theory.

I'd like to make one comment with respect to the phrase push back the frontiers. I think for the young people in our audience that are listening, I read an article once about, and the author stated as an introduction, that we really don't push back the frontier of knowledge in doing research. As a continuous step forward, this type of motion, that isn't what research is. It's more like going hunting where you have a lot of hound dogs that some go back, some go to the side, few go forward. But if you looked at the totality of the dogs, they would generally be heading little by little in the right direction. And I think that that's one thing people ought to get straight and going into this area. That there are a lot of people doing things that have been done before, or are really not progressing the area that much, you're looking into it. But as a general whole, we are moving forward. Every research project that is conducted is not directed toward a new fact

or a new area. Yes, in fact, sometimes it adds more to research to say that this cannot be done than to go ahead and actually accomplish something that is positive. In a larger sense, it's not a matter of answering questions, it's a matter of asking questions, and the really good research is the one that doesn't merely answer, but it opens up so many new questions that have never been thought of before. Which gives jobs to a lot of other physicists to work on. Oh, awful headaches, too. Kathy, what about the career as an opportunity for women? Is it a good, I'd read somewhere that there are only about 3 % I think of all the physicists employed last year were women. Well, first of all, I'd like to make the statement that the job opportunities for women are exactly the same as they are for men. And the fact that you just mentioned has another thing that goes along with this fact, I should say, is that the percentage of women that are expected to go into science

in the future is not expected to increase. Which is an even sadder thing. I mean, here we are a country who is depending upon its intellectual manpower as far as to keep this world free or part of it free. And this is such an important thing, our political life, our economic life, everything is devoted toward this objective. And yet, one of the greatest resources of this talent is not being tapped at all. I feel very strongly about this, of course, being a woman myself. But I just wonder why. And I think one of the reasons, and here again, I'd like to address myself to the younger people in the audience, is that you take a child of maybe 4 or 5, the time they start asking why, why does a ball bounce, why does the sunset? Well, little girls ask as many questions as little boys. But it seems at some point, either an adolescent or some

place, little girls get the idea that it's unfeminant to ask why, unfeminant to be curious. And I think that this curiosity can be killed, it's like anything else, it's an intellectual desire, it's like hunger or anything else. And you can stime it, you can fill it with things trivia, and it's dead. And so you get to college and you say, well, nursing is wonderful, physics is nice. But these things are foreign to them. I mean, a boy will take a mechanical clock apart or throw the tubes out of a radio that's going to be thrown away anyway. He's supposed to, I guess, all the little boys are supposed to do that. Or this type of thing. And so when he gets into the physics classroom, and they talk about the full -crime, he immediately might associate it to a teeter clutter, something that, to him, it's meaningful. It's not a lot of words in a book with an equation. I don't like it as to a girl. And I think that here is the point that I'd like to say to the teenage girls, next time you bring your father's car into a garage,

look over the shoulder of the mechanic and ask him what he's doing. I know they'd enjoy this. It's just that it's the social obstacle of you are not being a woman feminine if you know these things. I think here, perhaps, the whole point that often in the popular attitude, physics is gadgetry. Now, there's some absolutely beautiful gadgetry that goes on in physics. And gadgetry, not the Rube Goldberg type, but the real working gadgetry, is really quite aesthetically pleasing. It's nice to see a job well done. If it means building a radio into a ring or something like this, this is a very nice job. But gadgetry is not physics. And I think our old attitude, well, you mentioned taking apart the clock as a typical attitude a boy will do. Whether he's supposed to, or probably more likely, if he's not supposed to. This is an attitude the boy will do and the girl will not. But somehow they get the idea that gadgetry is physics and is gadgetry. And there's a great deal more to physics. Oh, I don't think that a 13 or 14 -year -old even

knows what the name physics means. Really, I don't know. Maybe, well, let me say that in my day, you didn't really know what the word meant. But I don't believe that. I think that you have to have some association between sight, touch, and all these senses in order to really understand physical phenomena. Because that's exactly what physics is doing. It's describing what goes on in the world. And unless you feel very closely associated because of your thinking about these things with physical phenomena, you're not going to get, at least I do not get the pleasure out of it. To me, I must, well, here again, I guess that's why I'm rather a applied physicist. I like to see things. I like to, I believe the theory, and there is nothing logically wrong learned. And there is nothing illogical that I can contest. But I like to see the result anyway, you know. I think this is human. I think this is a thing that is lacking in a girl and is in reference

to a woman. But don't they often look toward the end product that is, it is the gadget. The gadget becomes the physics rather than the physics may underlie the development. Well, their future education should erase that notion. Well, Bob, you've been working with institutes, retraining or continuing education for teachers. The teaching of physics is going much, coming much earlier in the grades now, may not this help erase the picture that Kathy was talking about where it is now as acceptable for girls as boys. I think so. Although there is a huge problem in the secondary school level, at the secondary school level, the physics over the past, oh, less than 10 years, has taken a remarkable increase. People who were in the physics look at what has been done in the past 10 years in the secondary school level, in high school courses. And they're rather amazed. I mean, you can't do that. Olm's law used to be a bit of a problem, and it, as a matter of fact, it's still maybe, but bore a theory of the atom also can be treated at this

level. And this is a problem because many of the teachers find themselves in the position of dealing with subjects that they had thought were much beyond the capability of their students and found perhaps to be beyond their own capabilities in many cases. And this is very definitely changing. I think at the primary grades, the problem is even more difficult because so many more teachers at the primary grades are not really aware of what science is, and it's even more important to have never really appreciated the very great satisfaction that can come from science, not from necessarily doing, but even understanding. After all, you don't have to be a great artist to appreciate art, or a musician indeed to appreciate music. And I think the problem for many adults in our world is not knowing enough to appreciate what is going on in science. And I think this, unfortunately, through parents and through teachers, can be sold to the students. I think the change is, in the way, I think the very fact that this does take time, the fact that even within 10 years an enormous change has been making at a secondary school level,

is encouraging. It's working down into the primary grades, and I think we'll see more and more of a change. So that in the future, perhaps the girl will be as interested in physics as a career as a boy is today. What about other fields that physicists might get into aside from the research area, the applied or pure research? Is there a need for physicists in law, in certainly on the management level, I would assume, in the writing field? Would this be a good career, let's say for a person who only wanted to stop with a bachelor's degree? That's a difficult question, but I think that taking an example from something that I've been associated with in the recent past, you take computer programming, which, if you're going to understand again, I'm sorry, the gadgetry of the computer, you have to have some training in physics. And here it applies to the law profession in that, how do you copyright

a computer program, for example? Or because it represents human logic, and you don't copyright a person, instead of thought. So here's an area which might be applicable to law, the system law. Certainly we're getting the more we know, the more every field is influencing every other field. And certainly it would seem to me in the field of communications that we need people who are trained in the sciences, as well as the writing end of it, to be communicators on television, and the newspapers, and magazines and so forth. I think in many fields which are much more closely allied to physics, perhaps than the law, which seems much farther out, there is even harder job. I think in the biological sciences, a very good example, that biology has long been considered sort of way off here, and physics was way off there, and the physics in biology, in modern biology has become

much too difficult for many of the biologists. I mean the biologists are doing a fine job in their field, but the problems in microbiology and in biophysics are getting to be extremely difficult physics problems. And it's rather interesting that several physicists have drifted over and have done some rather remarkable things. And this brings up the point of the interdisciplinary effort of all science and engineering today. Someone said that the frontiers of knowledge today are where the traditional disciplines intersect, and that's why we are developing the biophysicists and the astrophysicists and people of that nature. And does it appear that more of these cooperative areas are going to be developing in the future? I think so. I think it may represent a breakdown as well of some of the traditional barriers, the very fact that in science, it doesn't mean to be a physicist, may have been at one time quite far away from the field of chemistry. It no longer is. The physicists in the chemist in many ways are

talking a much closer to the same language. And so both, let's say, curricula will be changing in the field of applied technology into the engineering. I think we see this as well where many of the engineering fields, which have traditionally been pigeonholes where each of them was separated, we now find very strong overlap. Well, I want to thank you very much both for coming this morning and making physics sound like a very exciting and intriguing field. Thank you very much. And this is Don Anderson saying good morning for the American scene. This has been the American scene. Today's discussion, job horizons and physics at his guest, Catherine B. O 'Brien, Research Physicist, IIT Research Institute, and Robert W. Eston, Assistant Professor of Physics, IIT. Host on the series is Don Anderson of Illinois Tech. The American scene is pre -recorded and is produced by the Illinois Institute of Technology and Cooperation with WMAQ. Next week's topic

will be job horizons in small business and will be discussed by Mr. A. A. Imberman and Dr. Elmer H. Burek, as we continue our investigation of the American scene. Results count. And when it comes to the fight against heart disease, you can count on your heart association for results. Today most heart attack victims recover and many return to work. High blood pressure can be controlled in most cases.