Willard S. Boyle, Career Advice

[M.T. Al-Mansouri, Ph.D.]

So You Want to Be a Physicist It takes about as many years to become a physicist as any other professional, such as a lawyer or a medical doctor — approximately 10 years of schooling. Many opportunities exist for physicists beyond what we conventionally imagine a physicist would do. A perfect example of this is the analysis of stock markets by theoretical physicists — potentially a way to make a lot of money, too. Physicists can apply their knowledge of mathematics and of how physical systems behave to infer information about stocks, biology, medicine, drug interactions and many other phenomena in the world around us. Hourly average wages of physicists are typically higher than national average wages, and they are usually also above average for occupations in the natural and applied science sectors. Wages of professionals in the physical sciences have grown at an above-average rate in recent years. Unemployment fell for people working in the physical sciences during the 1990s and early 2000s and is at about two percent right now, so one has a good chance of getting a job as a physicist. Typical physics careers include specialties in electronics, communications, aerospace, remote sensing, biophysics, nuclear physics, optics, plasma physics, solid state physics, astrophysics, cosmology or experimental physics. Source: http://www.science.ca