A few month ago, I met a Professor who is now a very successful Biomedical physicist. I knew him before from his very nice articles, which he had published in high-impact journals during his PhD research. Those articles included very fundamental theoretical results and at that time very progressive experiments on deep physics. For reasons unknown to me, he had decided not to continue in the same field after his very successful PhD, and got involved in the more application-oriented field of biomedical physics, which naturally results in less PRLs but more publications in medical journals and patents.

I did not find anything odd with his decision, but I was curious about his motivation and his experience afterwards. So I asked him how he does feel about being closer to the medical than the physics community. He replied: “I wanted to broaden my audience. At the time of my PhD research, my papers were read by tens of scientists around the world. But now at congresses I can have audiences exceeding a few thousand, scientists and clinicians are listening to me, and both communities are interested in my research.”

This story, can be read as a nice example of what a broad horizon a physics student can see for his career, but I have told it as an excuse to tell you my own opinion about the role of public acceptance. I know that a massive audience cannot be the only criteria for choosing a field, but I can feel how hard can it be if you are not listened to. I also agree with the advice in survival guide that one should never complain about lack of recognition in front of an audience (p.139). But the same guide teaches me: “get cited or get lost.”(p.35)

For the ambiguous slowly-advancing career of a young enthusiastic researcher to be enjoyable, recognition really matters.

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