Ladies First....when Tiger Knocks!

The Blame Game has reached Physicists...rightly or more rightly!

It all started with Politics.

Till the Second World War, ordinary Physicists had little to do directly with Politics.

Then came the discovery of Nuclear Fission, essentially by two dogged German Chemists, from where Physicists took over. And then Hitler and the Second World War. And fears that Hitler was on the verge of bullying the great German Theoretical Physicist Heisenberg into building the first ever Atom Bomb (wrong nomenclature and wronger fear, as it turned out).

War breeds fear. And St. Einstein was roped in to convince Roosevelt that he better outdo Hitler. And then, all the Physicists of the Free World were herded into the forlorn desert sands of New Mexico to build the first ever Bomb.

And then the US Military took over and then Hiroshima.

And then the Cold War.

"For the first time", it was said, "Physicists have known Sin".

And then came the Military-Industrial Complex which ran the US economy; and everyone was hiring Physicists to use their talents for building more and more deadly weapons like Laser Bombs and precision guidance systems like the Global Positioning System (which uses the General Relativity of St. Einstein who would be turning in his grave to know that his 'innocent' theory is being put to military purposes).

Lots of Physicists refused to work for the Military. But many did...with good reason. When 'brains' and 'money' marry, half the offspring would be useful to Defense and the other half to 'Mankind'. Great inventions came up for everyday use...like the cell phone (used by terrorists for 'remote-timing' their bombs) and the MRI and PET for anyone who can afford them. And Nobel Prizes in Cosmology came from Bell Telephones Labs!

And the number of Physics Doctorates jumped by leaps and bounds. Theoretical Physics acquired an aura earlier reserved for Engineering and Medicine. They were all over the place.

Big Money made Physicists dream bigger. They got from the Government whatever they asked...billions of bucks to build costlier and costlier machines to test their pet theories of the Origin of the Universe and the Theory of Everything (known popularly as the String Theory).

But every dream run has an end. The Cold War came to a close and the US was looking inwards...and the all-wise US Congress stopped funding the Biggest Machine ever to be built, and spent their money in Health Care and Housing...

Ah!... 'There is the rub'..as Hamlet would say.

Without machines to test their theories, Theoretical Physicists were reduced to Dreamers.

The best of the brains pursuing String Theory were forced to look for other avenues of making a living and using their prodigious talents.

Then came the Greed of "Off-Shore Capitalism".

The buzz word everywhere was "Finance, Finance, Finance".

One of my most talented students working as a Theoretical Physics Professor at a renowned College of London told me that his Doctoral students asked him for problems involving not 'analytical work' but 'heavy computational work.' He was surprised and asked them why. Pat came the reply that they want a job in Banking and Finance since there is no future in Theoretical Physics!

One of my best students, after doing world-class work at Princeton and Berkeley in String Theory shifted to problems involving statistical models which the Investment Bankers needed badly.

My nephew who is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering holds a software job in a reputed Multinational Bank in Singapore. He said that their boss is a Theoretical Nuclear Physicist.

And then came the Doomsday for Investment Banking and the World Economy.

Nowadays I constantly read articles where the Global Bank Mangers are blaming their Theoretical Physics Employees for writing such inscrutable software programs that they can no longer read their Balance Sheets and; 'God only knows where our money went'.

Neither Obama nor Chidambaram looks like figuring out what exactly to do....

When Politics, Military and Greed run the system, why blame the poor Physics chaps?

"Physicists First....when Recession Knocks"!