92 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
92 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
---
|
||
title: "Scientist"
|
||
chunk: 3/3
|
||
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientist"
|
||
category: "reference"
|
||
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
||
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:47:07.501110+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) |