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My favourite fact about Einstein is that in 1905 he submitted 5 papers - the last was his PHD submission. Einsteins two most important papers were attributed to
by ErrantX 17y ago
My favourite fact about Einstein is that in 1905 he submitted 5 papers - the last was his PHD submission. Einsteins two most important papers were attributed to "Mr Einstein" :)
- arethuza 17y agoExactly - during his "Wonder Year" of 1905 he was most certainly an "amateur". I'm not sure having a PhD qualifies you as a professional anyway - certainly not in the PE, lawyer, doctor or accountant sense.
- JoachimSchipper 17y agoBeing almost done with your PhD doesn't make you an amateur in the sense used in the article.
- arethuza 17y agoThe Patent Office wasn't paying him to do his research - he had a "day job" that he needed to do to make ends meet and to allow him some time to do what he had a passion for in his own time. What is that if it isn't an amateur?
- JoachimSchipper 17y agoClearly, Einstein wasn't a professional researcher at the time; however, he wasn't an outsider either, having gotten his PhD.
- hga 17y agoIt also bears emphasizing that he was a theoretician, not an experimentalist. He made his name in 1905 explaining phenomena that no one else had been able to (or doing a lot better job of it). To do this you need familiarity with the field and time to think and so on.
- arethuza 17y agoBut he did lots of his major work before he got his PhD.
- scott_s 17y agoBecause getting a PhD requires doing research in your field.
- pavel_lishin 17y agoSo if someone with multiple doctorates resigns his tenured position and works at McDonald's flipping burgers during the day, he is back to amateur status?
- scott_s 17y agoI do not have my PhD yet. Yet I am clearly inside the academic system because I am at a university. A PhD is a researcher merit badge. Obtaining it means you've been trained by people in your field how to do research. I have real difficulty calling anyone working on their PhD, or anyone who has a PhD, an "amateur."
- arethuza 17y agoSo what are you if you are doing research and you aren't paid to do it? I've been in that situation where I had a "day" job (running a software company) and doing a PhD on the side? I was certainly part of the academic community but I wasn't a paid "professional" researcher.
- scott_s 17y agoYou are by no means an amateur researcher in that case. In this context, "professional" does not mean "paid to do it." It means vetted or accredited in some way. PhD students are in the process of being vetted, are a part of the system.
- arethuza 17y agoI guess I tend to react to the term "professional" rather strongly because I'm married to a lawyer, have a brother who is a professionally qualified engineer and I know a few medical doctors. To me those are real "professionals" - folks who have jobs where you are personally held liable and if you screw up badly enough they can take your professional qualification away from you and you are out of work as you can't legally do the job without that qualification. In that context there is a very sharp boundary between "professional" and not - for the rest of us the boundary is rather fuzzy. I certainly don't regard myself as a professional simply because I am paid to do something or that I make my living out of it or even, unlikely as it may seem, occasionally show some competence ;-)