I don’t think I’ll ever be smart or educated enough to make any groundbreaking moves in the area of physics, so I’ve been thinking about this:
Is there any way I could contact a famous and important physicist still working today, and volunteer to be their unpaid butler who gets nothing but three meals a day and a place to shower and wash my clothes?
That way, I could do all of his or her chores and then that person could spend all their time doing physics.
Kind of a crazy thought, but it may be the only way I could contribute to physics.
Or: I could be an unpaid gopher type guy for a laboratory full of physicists.
It seems to me most physicists work for universities, the government or corporations. Are you thinking about independent scientists working on research of their own? I think that went out with Nikola Tesla.
Besides you doing everything in the laboratory, no idea how common this may be, but I heard rumours of, e.g., such-and-such a big-shot PI going to a conference and more or less ordering a student to go to their house and take care of the dogs, or pick up dry cleaning, or other chores.
ETA I believe Stephen Hawking would hire students to help him with various tasks, for obvious reasons.
ETA2 I once met someone who let a couple of students board at his house in exchange for doing all the chores, cooking, etc. Apparently it’s no longer easy to put yourself though a good university with nothing more than a paper route.
I don’t know any physicists personally, but I assume you can get the same level of interactive experience watching a temp entering data on the computer all day.
The “Eureka” moment could take years, and even then, not until after extensive experimentation and testing. You could be in charge of keeping the champagne bottles nearby, then you’ll get to clean up afterward. Doesn’t that sound glamorous?
There are various citizen scientist projects that allow you (or anyone else) to contribute to science, in a way that is more meaningful than doing someone’s laundry.
I was going to tell you, come work for me. But then you specified a “famous and important physicist”. I’m really mediocre, very lackluster.
I like your idea though!
Would you consider a similar approach to helping other fields that don’t pay well? Volunteer for somebody personally, who runs a poor volunteer organization?
Yes, my wife is in the final stretch of finishing her PhD (COVID pretty much stifled her access to, well, everything). And yes, she gets all the scut work, in no small part to being the only female in the small department who doesn’t think it’s beneath her to actually get the lab ready for things like safety certification and the like. One of the reasons it’s taken her literally years longer than her male compatriots (she’s always bottom priority for anything, and her department is full of old (60+) eastern European male professors who can’t be bothered for people who aren’t -pushy-).
And yes, she’s been asked to do pretty much all the office scut work (being on hold to tech support for 4 hours if the equipment is down), but the only time she’s had to do personal work was dog sitting for the chair once (although she was paid a very small sum to do it at least).
Otherwise we’ve had Neil deGrasse Tyson visit the board, you could ask him, but even unpaid, I think you’d be pretty far back in line. My wife would like to work with him for enough to cover her student loans and basic living expenses.
I don’t have need for a butler but I could use a new Forehead of Security. Do you fumble with basic technology and are you prepared to be blown up as a plot device to instigate my ill-conceived campaign of vengence? Oh, never mind, then,
I think @Stranger_On_A_Train is on to something though! There are many, many mad scientists out there if my pulp movie and novel fixation has any bearing on reality. And they always seem to have at least one devoted henchperson (this is modern times after all) who never seem to get paid and do all the scut work!
And many of them are crazed scientists of the physics persuasion! Due to the high turnover in the field, you’re bound to find one with an opening somewhere in the organization.
When I was an undergrad physics student, I got a job as a physics lab assistant. I was paid through a work study program. I did similar work as the grad student on the project. We had a lot of fun doing it. He ended up with a PhD a couple years after I graduated and moved on. I doubt someone off the street would be considered for something like that.
Fun story: when looking for a job, I was going through the physics buildings, knocking on doors with a pile of resumes. I asked a recent Nobel prize winner who said that he was taking a year off from research, but I should go upstairs and ask Henry who has a history of getting students jobs. So I went upstairs and got a job with Henry.
