[ Ссылка ] - Does your faith influence your choice of research problem or choice of career? Listen to Ard Louis, Reader in Theoretical Physics at Oxford, explain how his faith affected his path into academia as a scientist.
Transcript: That's a really interesting question. So I think my Christian faith definitely affected my choice of career. So, when I was finishing my PhD, it was a bad time to be in Academia. I was told - left, right, and center - that we should all leave academia and get real jobs, because there would be no real jobs in our future.
I felt God that had called me to stay in academia and so I did, for that reason.
Some of you who are not Christian may think that's a strange thing to do. But Christians will often sense the idea that God has called them and God has told them this is what they should do. They're not always 100% sure of that, but sometimes they're pretty sure that's the case. And that was the case and I did. I have in fact - to my great surprise - succeeded at having an academic career.
The second question is has that affected how I do my research and the problems that I do. This is an interesting question - it has. A number of years ago when I was still a post-doc, which means somebody without a real job, desperately hoping that I was going to get a real, permanent job like I have now. For those who are post-docs, you know, you're in a precarious situation. You're on a short term contract. You somehow hope you'll make that big discovery that gives you that tenure track position.
At some point, I was thinking about - which of these problems? When you're on those short-term contracts, the temptation is to do things that you know are going to score quickly, you're going to get publications quickly. Because you need it for that next step.
At some point, I was thinking about this, and I thought: you know what, if God has called me to research - if one day I stand before the judgment, God's not going to be particularly impressed by - I published this many papers in a year. He's going to say - did you use your talents for the best possibilities. Did you look at what was really important or what really mattered?
So for me, I took a step back and I thought - you know what, let me think about the different problems that I have in front of me. Let me not ask not which ones are the most trendy or which ones are gonna get me the most publications out. But which ones do I think - in my best possible judgment - are the best ones to work on? Those problems ended up being very fruitful and they got be a tenure track and now a tenured post.
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