Krantz S.G. The survival of a mathematician: from tenure to emeritus

Б.м.: б.и., 2007. — 281 p.The tradition in mathematics is that the profession is a sink-or-swim operation. Nobody tells you, once you earn the venerable Ph.D., what you are supposed to do next. If you are lucky, your thesis advisor will get you a job. If you are especially lucky, this will be an academic job. But, in point of fact, there are many choices these days. Your first job could be at a lab that is part of the genome project. It could be at Microsoft. It could be with the Federal Government. But then just what are you supposed to do? How do you function? What are your goals? What is expected of you? To whom are you answerable?
It is a hard fact that more than 90% of American Ph.D. mathematicians never write a paper. Of those who do, most write just one paper based on the Ph.D. thesis and that’s it. Nothing more. Why is this? Is the cutting of the (academic) umbilical cord so traumatic that most people just fall off the wagon? Or are the reasons more complicated? Do people just get wrapped up in other duties, or other career pursuits, and decide after a while that “Publish or perish” is not part of their credo? Are they perhaps in a job where publishing and doing research is not really the thing that is rewarded?
And what about teaching? If you are working for the National Security Agency (as, for instance, three of my Ph.D. students now are), then you certainly will not be teaching classes, or grading papers, or giving grades. But you will have to give seminars. You will have to mentor others. You
will have to provide guidance to younger staff members. How does one learn these skills?
And, no matter where you work or what you do, you will no doubt work as part of a team. You will have to function in meetings, and on conference calls, and in interactions with your supervisors and your underlings.