Commentary

Fame in Astrophysics

When I was a graduate student helping guide a field trip to the Haystack radio observatory, I fell into conversation with an undergraduate who claimed that desire for the Nobel prize drove all science. At that time I didn't believe this, and I told her so. My own motives for studying astrophysics were primarily a desire to understand how the universe works and a love of solving difficult technical problems, and I projected these motives onto the scientific community as a whole.

But the undergraduate's claim is not fully mistaken. Status within the community drives a surprising number of scientists; some are even driven by the desire of being famous throughout the world and through the centuries, as Newton and Einstein are now famous.

I recall a colleague commenting about another researcher that “he wants to become famous,” and in the context of the solution of another problem that “whoever solves this problem will become famous.” I knew a graduate student at Harvard who kept some objects a fellow graduate student had given him under the belief that the second student would become world-renowned and the objects would therefore become valuable. I recall a story about a dinner at a scientific workshop, how after several ideas were discussed as possible solutions to a particularly difficult problem, one of the scientists told the others “I want everyone to remember that I was at this table during this discussion!”

The belief that someone can become famous for research is strong within the scientific community. Part of the reason is that there are famous scientists from the past, and part is that within science, many equations and principles are labeled with the names of scientists. The physics community has a strong memory of its outstanding physicists of the past; most physics books contain short histories of discoveries in physics.

But the nature of fame has changed over the past century with the advance of the profession. An astrophysicist can name the people who are important within his own field, but he can only name a handful of people who are important in the broader profession. Someone outside of astrophysics would be hard pressed to name any astrophysicist now living; the last famous astrophysicist was Carl Sagan, and his fame came from his writings rather that from his research. Ask someone to name the Nobel prize winners of the past decade, and you would be lucky to get even a single name.

Even in science's memory, fame always contained an element of myth. When I learned special relativity, I was taught that the parameter that describes time dilation is the “Lorentz factor”, but my father, who is an engineer, was taught that this parameter was the “Lorentz-Fitzgerald factor.” Poor Fitzgerald's fame has waned. In a recent review of the Kuiper Belt, the authors makes a point about terminology:

At times, the naming of equations displays the fragmentation of the field. In gravitational physics, the Jeans length describes the length scale over which self-gravity of a set of stars can counteract the motion of those stars. Plasma physics has a similar length scale, called the Debye length, that describes when the electric field created within a set of positive and negative charges can counteract the motion of the charges. Conceptually and mathematically these length scales are the same, but one is given the name of an astronomer, and the other of a physicist.

Fame in modern science is now a myth, with the scientist joining the engineer in anonymity. The vastness and specialization within the profession has fracture the broad community into tribes, and fame is now limited to that tribe. Fame in astrophysics today is a provincial fame.