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THE WORLD OF BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
by 178 microbiologists and 107 pharmacologists. The low representation
of other disciplines among investigators in industry is somewhat discon-
certing. For example, only two embryologists, three anatomists, four cell
biologists, four ecologists, eight animal pathologists, 10 biophysicists, 13
botanists, and 25 zoologists reported that they were in the employ of some
industrial establishment.
Finally, in this regard, it should be remarked that of the 12,151 life
scientists responding, 442 had obtained Ph.D.'s in chemistry and 114 in
other fields of the physical sciences (about one half in physics), while 105
individuals were originally educated as psychologists. (No questionnaires
were sent to individual practicing research psychologists or to the chairmen
of either psychiatry or psychology departments.) The employment dis-
tribution of these 662 converts to the life sciences among institutions of
higher learning, the federal government, industry, and other organizations
was much like that of the groups described earlier.
MOBILITY OF LIFE SCIENTISTS
Geographic mobility, so prominently a characteristic of American society,
is nowhere more evident than in the scientific community. As shown in
Table 8, scientists born in each of the standard census regions can currently
be found in each of the other census regions. Presumably, the direction of
these migrations is dictated largely by increasing employment opportuni-
ties. This is particularly evident in the considerable migration from all
other census regions to the Pacific Coast region and the South Atlantic
region. Of at least equal interest, however, is the even greater tendency
for relocation to regions likely to produce the least "cultural shock." Not
only is there the expected tendency of a substantial fraction of all scientists
in all census regions to remain within the states or census regions within
which they were born, but the most frequent move from one region to
another has been to an adjoining area where life patterns are similar-e.g.,
from the lower South to the upper South, or within the Midwest.
For the entire population of life scientists, the average length of employ-
ment in the current position was 9.6 years, with the median 6 to 7 years.
Fifty-five percent of all respondents had held at least one previous position
with a different employer, quite apart from any number of postdoctoral
appointments. The average length of employment in that previous position
was 4.7 years, and the median was 3 to 4 years. Although 90.5 percent of
all such moves had been made after less than 10 years with the previous
employer, employment translocation was reported by some scientists even
after as long as 40 years with the initial employer.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
life scientists
