Physics The Future of "Lone Physicists" - Researching Physics Alone?

[Dale]

I mean with the group itself, I'm generally good working with others.

Oh good. Then I misunderstood.

In that case, it is not a question of being a solo physicist, but rather just a question of finding a good group. That is always a concern, but chances are that you can make good contacts at conferences and get a feel for how the group is.

 

[e.bar.goum]

Oh good. Then I misunderstood.

In that case, it is not a question of being a solo physicist, but rather just a question of finding a good group. That is always a concern, but chances are that you can make good contacts at conferences and get a feel for how the group is.

In addition, I think that the quality of groups in academia are better than in undergrad/high school (on average). Academia selects pretty strongly for this.

 

[atyy]

Slightly off topic but why is massive collaboration so common in the sciences but not in mathematics? For example in physics the higgs boson discovery had like 3k authors, where in math its almost always been 1 or 2 authors working in isolation. For example Andrew wiles working for 7 years in secret on Fermats last theorem before collaborated to fix the proof with richard taylor or perelman working alone for years to prove the poincare conjecture and even yitang zang working in secret to prove the gap between primes. Those are some of the biggest recent discoveries in math also.

Is what you are saying even true? For the sake of discussion, let's take authorship as a practical measure of "working alone". The Atiyah-Singer theorem has already been pointed out as a major mathematical discovery obtained by a collaboration. Another that comes to mind is the Green-Tao theorem. Below are descriptions of the work of last year's Fields Medalists. It looks like Hairer was the only one who worked alone. Incidentally his prize is the most physiky in some sense, or maybe the least - I can't understand his work at all - I'd love to understand it, because apparently he is able to give a proper mathematical existence to an equation that condensed matter physicists have been studying for years.

http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/2014/news_release_bhargava.pdf
http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/2014/news_release_avila.pdf
http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/2014/news_release_hairer.pdf
http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/2014/news_release_mirzakhani.pdf

On the other hand, in physics the following important papers were single-authored:
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9510017
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9711200
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9707021

But could you really argue that those were more important than say:
http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1993/A1993LJ13600001.pdf
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9601029
or the BCS paper?

 

[moontiger]

I don't know about experiment, but yes you can be a solo theoretical physicist and I know a handful of people who are, though usually they have done non-solo training to the postdoc level first.

But it is an uphill battle. The main problem is that without affiliation to a university or other institution you do not have access to most physics journals, computational software, etc.--a lot of expensive resources that are necessary to do theoretical research these days and that people at research institutions take for granted. You also don't have a circle of people around you to discuss with--or cheering you on--so it's hard to stay motivated. Plus unless you are in academia, there is no real reward for publishing...it's probably not going to advance whatever job you are doing 40 hours a week to support yourself. And at some point in life most people acquire spouses and families, and at that point would rather invest their free time there.

I think that's why solo physics doesn't work out for most people.

 

[jack476]

I see. So if someone doesn't like working with others they should not be a physicist?

Working with others is just going to be an unavoidable part of any professional career. There are very few jobs, both in and outside of STEM, that come with the expectation that they can or should be done alone.

Also, why? What has changed about physics that has made it so that someone can't do anything by themselves?

Cost and complexity. Research is an expensive endeavor and it requires the backing of an organization. You also have to work with experts in other fields, for example, modern theoretical physics often makes use of computer simulations which can require a lot of power, so you have to have programmers who know how to maintain and operate, and in many cases build from scratch, a supercomputer. You may require specialized equipment, the design of which will require the input of an engineer. One person can't reasonably be expected to handle all of that alone.

Staying competitive and relevant also means communicating with others in your own field, networking, going to conferences, stuff like that.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is the expectation that you have someone who can check your work. Without this, you risk corruption and turning into a crank.

 

[atyy]

Here is a way to get the best of both worlds - unwittingly collaborate, then write solo papers

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~goldfeld/ErdosSelbergDispute.pdf

 

[jesse73]

Mathematics is different and is funded with a different culture. People in physics in the US are only going to shift more towards working in bigger groups because the funding decision makers at NSF want to fund larger groups which are ideally interdisciplinary. You can do whatever you want in this world if you pay for it yourself.

 

[Ben Niehoff]

Do you know Juan? It's hard to say that he works by himself. He has 14 papers with 500+ citations. Eleven of them have co-authors.

I know Juan, a little bit anyway. He absolutely does not work in a vacuum. No one does.

A single person working alone cannot possibly keep up with what's happening in the field. You at least need to be at an institution where you can talk to people. Aside from that, collaborators bring useful skill sets and knowledge to the table that you may not possesses yourself. And for long, intricate calculations, it's useful to have a second pair of eyes to make sure there are no mistakes.

If Einstein had collaborated with, say, Hilbert, then we would have celebrated the centennial of general relativity ten years ago.

 

[PeterDonis]

If Einstein had collaborated with, say, Hilbert, then we would have celebrated the centennial of general relativity ten years ago.

I think that's a bit extreme. First of all, Einstein did collaborate with Hilbert in 1915; so at best you can say that if he had done so sooner, he might have reached the final form of the field equation sooner. (IIRC Einstein visited Hilbert in Gottingen around June 1915, and Hilbert completed his derivation of the field equation using the principle of least action in November 1915, something like 5 days before Einstein reached it independently.)

But how much sooner? I don't think it could have been before 1908 at the earliest, because the two key physical insights were in 1907 and 1908--Einstein's realization that a body falling freely will not feel its own weight, and Minkowski's introduction of spacetime. And even then I'm not sure the field equation could have been reached right away.

Also, Einstein was by no means the only one working on a relativistic theory of gravity in the period 1908-1915, and he was not out of touch with others who were doing so (Nordstrom, for example).

 

[Ben Niehoff]

I think that's a bit extreme. First of all, Einstein did collaborate with Hilbert in 1915; so at best you can say that if he had done so sooner, he might have reached the final form of the field equation sooner. (IIRC Einstein visited Hilbert in Gottingen around June 1915, and Hilbert completed his derivation of the field equation using the principle of least action in November 1915, something like 5 days before Einstein reached it independently.)

But how much sooner? I don't think it could have been before 1908 at the earliest, because the two key physical insights were in 1907 and 1908--Einstein's realization that a body falling freely will not feel its own weight, and Minkowski's introduction of spacetime. And even then I'm not sure the field equation could have been reached right away.

Also, Einstein was by no means the only one working on a relativistic theory of gravity in the period 1908-1915, and he was not out of touch with others who were doing so (Nordstrom, for example).

My point is that Einstein spent probably 10 years stumbling around in the dark, struggling with things that were fairly obvious to Hilbert. Off and on throughout that time, there are even talks Einstein gave where he insisted that general covariance was not important, and that probably no generally-covariant field equations could be written down that were consistent with nature.

 

[Redbelly98]

Just to clarify, when I say lone physicist I mean someone working on the actual theory by themselves, ie not in a group research project.

One thing that is not clear to me: do you have in mind:

• Somebody with a position at a research or university institution
  
• Somebody with no such position, but has a degree in physics
• Somebody without a degree or formal training in physics

What you are asking gets progressively harder as you go down that list, and many would argue becomes impossible (at least for practical purposes) by the 2nd or 3rd bullet point.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I am surprised that this has gone on as long as it has. People are having to look at centrury-old cases to see if they might be an example. That says something, no?

 

[Evo]

This is long done.