---
title: "Scientist"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientist"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:23:46.187637+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== Research interests ====
Scientists include experimentalists who mainly perform experiments to test hypotheses, and theoreticians who mainly develop models to explain existing data and predict new results. There is a continuum between the two activities and the division between them is not clear-cut, with many scientists performing both tasks.
Those considering science as a career often look to the frontiers. These include cosmology and biology, especially molecular biology and the human genome project. Other areas of active research include the exploration of matter at the scale of elementary particles as described by high-energy physics, and materials science, which seeks to discover and design new materials. Others choose to study brain function and neurotransmitters, which is considered by many to be the "final frontier". There are many important discoveries to make regarding the nature of the mind and human thought, much of which still remains unknown.

=== By specialization ===

==== Natural science ====

===== Physical science =====

===== Life science =====

==== Social science ====

==== Formal science ====

==== Applied ====

==== Interdisciplinary ====

=== By employer ===
Academic
Independent scientist
Industrial/applied scientist
Citizen scientist
Government scientist

== Demography ==

=== By country ===
The number of scientists is vastly different from country to country. For instance, there are only four full-time scientists per 10,000 workers in India, while this number is 79 for the United Kingdom, and 85 for the United States.

==== United States ====
According to the National Science Foundation, 4.7 million people with science degrees worked in the United States in 2015, across all disciplines and employment sectors. The figure included twice as many men as women. Of that total, 17% worked in academia, that is, at universities and undergraduate institutions, and men held 53% of those positions. 5% of scientists worked for the federal government, and about 3.5% were self-employed. Of the latter two groups, two-thirds were men. 59% of scientists in the United States were employed in industry or business, and another 6% worked in non-profit positions.

=== By gender ===

Scientist and engineering statistics are usually intertwined, but they indicate that women enter the field far less than men, though this gap is narrowing. The number of science and engineering doctorates awarded to women rose from a mere 7 percent in 1970 to 34 percent in 1985 and in engineering alone the numbers of bachelor's degrees awarded to women rose from only 385 in 1975 to more than 11000 in 1985. 

== See also ==
Engineers
Inventor
Researcher
Fields Medal
Hippocratic Oath for Scientists
History of science
Intellectual
Independent scientist
Licensure
Mad scientist
Natural science
Nobel Prize
Protoscience
Normative science
Pseudoscience
Scholar
Science
Social science
Related lists
List of engineers
List of mathematicians
List of Nobel laureates in Physics
List of Nobel laureates in Chemistry
List of Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine
List of Russian scientists
List of Roman Catholic cleric-scientists

== References ==

== External articles ==
Further reading
Alison Gopnik, "Finding Our Inner Scientist" Archived 2016-04-12 at the Wayback Machine, Daedalus, Winter 2004.
Charles George Herbermann, The Catholic Encyclopedia. Science and the Church. The Encyclopedia press, 1913. v.13. Page 598.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962.
Arthur Jack Meadows. The Victorian Scientist: The Growth of a Profession, 2004. ISBN 0-7123-0894-6.
Science, The Relation of Pure Science to Industrial Research. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Page 511 onwards.
Websites
For best results, add a little inspiration – The Telegraph about What Inspired You?, a survey of key thinkers in science, technology and medicine
Peer Review Journal Science on amateur scientists
The philosophy of the inductive sciences, founded upon their history (1847) – Complete Text
Audio-Visual
"The Scientist", BBC Radio 4 discussion with John Gribbin, Patricia Fara and Hugh Pennington (In Our Time, Oct. 24, 2002)