The demography of the scientific profession

The transition to steady state conditions is having a profound effect on research careers. Ever since science became a regular profession in the late nineteenth century, it has continually expanded in numbers and in employment opportunities [§4.1]. This has kept it a buoyant open-ended enterprise, where talented newcomers were welcome, and where they could look forward to opportunities for personal advancement right through their working lives. Yes, it was an uncommon profession, open only to a gifted, dedicated, minority. Yes, it was highly competitive, requiring exceptional tenacity to get to the top. Yes, it was not very well paid, and the reward of success was fame rather than fortune. But, even for the socially unambitious, it provided a secure, well-respected niche from which to explore nature, and seek honestly after truth.

Of course, the scientific profession has seen some hard times. At various periods, in various countries, military defeat, economic depression, or political repression have temporarily disrupted research careers. The biographies of many of the greatest European scientists of the twentieth century are punctuated with episodes of personal insecurity, hardship or exile: the stories of many of the lesser figures are even more tragic. In Mao's China, almost the whole scientific community was banished into squalid rural drudgery for a generation.