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Policy and funding

Policy and funding

Why do the world’s leading scientists flock to the United States?

01 Aug 2000

Leading physicists from Europe, Canada and elsewhere are giving up established research careers to work in the United States. Mark Sincell finds out why.

Thomas Baumgarte did not plan to stay in the United States. “It happened in several stages,” says the German-born astrophysics post-doc at the University of Illinois. A one-year undergraduate visit to Cornell University in New York State led to a PhD at Cornell, and then an offer to stay on as a post-doctoral researcher in Illinois. Along the way, he met and married fellow physicist Karen Topp, an American, and they now have a young daughter. Although Baumgarte is including European jobs in his search for a permanent position, he hopes to stay in the US.

It is a familiar story. Talented researchers, drawn by the comparatively high salaries and aggressive intellectual climate, have been flowing into the US from Canada and Europe since 1945. Many never go back. American scientists, on the other hand, tend to stay at home. “There is no reward for foreign travel,” explains Betty Kirk, director of programmes in Central Europe and Asia for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “The US is a little myopic in that sense.”

Irving Lerch, director of international affairs at the American Institute of Physics, agrees: “There is very little flow in the opposite direction.”

This is confirmed by Richard Ellis, who recently resigned from one of the top jobs in European astronomy – director of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University – to join the California Institute of Technology. “The salary levels are much higher in the US, so there is a tendency not to return,” says Ellis, who will be director of a new telescope project called the California Extremely Large Telescope (CELT).

In addition to better salaries, there are more funds for research in the US. String theorist Michael Duff left a professorship at Imperial College in London in the 1980s to join Texas A&M University. “[In the UK] I spent much more effort – and time – competing for money,” says Duff, who recently moved on to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Now I spend that time and effort doing research.”

Brain drains and gains

Depending on your perspective, the flow of scientific talent to the US is either a brain drain or a brain gain. But is there really a persistent net flow of European scientists into the US? “There is not a great deal of hard data,” says Bob Ward, a science-policy researcher at the Royal Society in London, “so it is difficult to demonstrate that there is a brain drain.” However, the proportion of fellows of the Royal Society – the UK’s foremost academic society – working outside the UK has increased significantly over the past decade.

Money, however, is not the only reason to emigrate. Most scientists leave their home countries looking for new professional challenges. After five years as the director of the Institute of Astronomy, Richard Ellis “could not see what was next in Britain. I needed to do something different, I needed to move”. So when Caltech offered him the chance to lead the development of a new telescope, he jumped, but not without some reservations. “It was a huge decision,” he says.

Scott Tremaine, a Canadian astrophysicist, was also looking for more than money when he moved from the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) in Toronto to Princeton University in New Jersey. “[CITA] offered me a comparable compensation package,” Tremaine recalls, “but I still wanted a new challenge.” And he found it. As the new chair of the department of astrophysical sciences at Princeton, Tremaine leads a small elite department that must compete with departments over twice its size.

And simply moving to a new country presents unforeseen difficulties. “The biggest surprise,” says Ellis, “was how hard it was, at the age of 49, to get acclimatized to a new culture.” In addition to the high expectations of his colleagues and the stress of building an organizational infrastructure from scratch without the benefit of a wide network of professional contacts, Ellis’s wife had to wait several months to get permission to work in the US. All the distractions take a toll. “[Scientists] should expect to lose about a year,” he adds.

Once settled, however, researchers are often reluctant to leave. “I am growing roots,” says German physicist Wolfgang Ketterle, who first moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 10 years ago with his wife and three children. Ketterle now runs one of the world’s leading groups working on atom lasers and Bose-Einstein condensates. But an offer to return to Germany almost convinced him to pull up those roots. “If everything had not been in such good shape, I would have returned,” says Ketterle, “but I am very happy at MIT. Why fix it if it works?”

The transition to a new culture is never complete, however. “I think everyone discovers a part of themselves that is happy in the US and a part that is happy in Europe,” says Dutch string theorist Herman Verlinde, who moved from the University of Amsterdam to Princeton University in 1998. Verlinde stills spends summers with his family in Holland.

Back home

What about the countries these prominent scientists left behind? Are they helped or hurt by the mobile science population? “I think it is tremendously important for scientists to work abroad,” says Ketterle. “And it benefits the home country because quite a few of the very best return.” And when they do, they undoubtedly bring a wealth of new experience with them.

There is a concern, however, that these returning scientists leave the best of their research careers in their adopted countries. “There is a danger that scientists will spend their prime, when they are most innovative, in the US,” says Bob Ward.

And with the international battle for science talent hoting up, innovative scientists are at a premium. The demand for scientifically trained workers has climbed dramatically in recent years; yet at the same time, student interest has waned. “Declining enrolments in science are really the most severe problem,” says Irving Lerch at the AIP. “It is an internal brain drain.” With fewer people to fill more research slots, the demand for talent will continue to rise. “It is a complex ecology,” says Lerch, “and I believe that the competition will become even more fierce.”

To fill these important niches in their economies, many countries are competing to keep their native scientists home. “Holland has a good stimulus package,” says Verlinde. Meanwhile in the UK, a recent report from the Royal Society recommended increasing salaries to retain the highest calibre researchers, and the government has just announced an investment of £1bn in new equipment and infrastructure for research (see p5).

However, those expecting a return to the days of national scientific sovereignty are sure to be disappointed. It is just too easy to hop from country to country. “Science is very international now and the boundaries between countries are being erased,” says Richard Ellis. Thomas Baumgarte agrees: “A hundred years ago, you bought a one-way ticket on the boat and never expected to return home. Now, no one comes [to the US] without a return plane ticket.”

But Michael Duff, for one, is sceptical that things will change soon, although he adds that “the climate of hostility to science [in the UK] is not there anymore”. Despite a bumpy transition from London to a small Texas town before his latest move to Michigan, Duff is happy to be out of Britain. “I have no regrets,” he says. “Life is much better now.”

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