Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system (2013)

When I was first exposed to the research "environment" during my Diplom studies (undergraduate - graduate, early to mid 90ies), I immediately recognised that if you actually love research and knowledge, academia was the last thing you ever want to get into. No surer way to kill the spark. Now that I've gone back to do my PhD, the only reason I can do something I consider meaningful is because I am not a regular PhD student. Interestingly, that's also…

It should be noted that the scientists themselves, and particularly the top scientists, since the others are not as easily heard or listened to, have largely contributed to the development of this particular academic system in which the quality of one's work and academic decisions (recruitment, tenure, salary) are evaluated primarily, but not exclusively, by: total number of publications, citations, grants obtained and their monetary values, number of students, impact factor of the journals in which the research…

(2013)

I mean it’s pretty easy to look at the “academic output” of luminaries like Einstein, Newton, Maxwell, and many more… and to be honest, outside of mathematics, I’m pretty sure most of them “wouldn’t be productive enough for today’s academic system”… sadly we no longer have a place for people who want to devote themselves to deeply thinking about specific individual problems for years before finally solving one vexing problem that the person was determined to solve.