Malcolm Duncan and the New Laws of Physics
by Marla Houghteling
DR. MALCOLM DUNCAN saw his career as a theoretical physicist
die along with the demise of a big machine – the SSC, the
Superconducting Supercollider. It was while he was associate
professor of physics at the University of Iowa in 1993 that
he decided to switch from physicist to lawyer. He was stunned
by the news of the abandonment of the most ambitious science
project ever undertaken. The SSC, already famous for its planned
54-mile tunnel circling Waxahachie, Texas, was to house 10,000
superconducting magnets, which would act as proton accelerators.
It was predicted that the energy produced by beams of protons
colliding would approach the energy that resulted from the
Big Bang. Physicists were banking on job creation from this
pure-science project. “When it was cancelled, there was a
feeling among both experimentalists and theorists that high-energy
physics was finished in the U.S,” says Dr. Duncan.
He arrived at the University of Michigan in 1983, having
just earned his D. Phil. (the British version of Ph.D.) in
theoretical particle physics from the Oxford University. The
two years spent in Ann Arbor gave him the opportunity to work
with Martinus J.G. Veltman, who was a Nobel laureate for physics
in 1999. “When I first came to the States, I got involved
in some of the early calculations for the physics that would
happen at the Supercollider.” Early on, part of his career
was “invested in this machine in Texas.”
His work involved both research and teaching: research centered
around subnuclear physics and cosmology; his teaching load
focused on courses in quantum theory and research-level physics.
During the 80s and early 90s, Duncan followed the path of
many postdocs holding a variety of temporary positions. In
1985 for instance, another two-year fellowship took him to
the University of Pennsylvania. Then, in 1987 he traveled
to Geneva, Switzerland, as a two-year fellow at CERN, the
European particle physics laboratory. This was a “wonderful
professional experience,” says Dr. Duncan. He subsequently
returned to the States for three years at the University of
Minnesota. In 1992, a teaching position at the University
of Iowa opened up. “It was very hard to get a job in the early
90s,” he recalls. Although he considers himself at heart a
“hard-core researcher.”
Science had always been a consuming interest of Dr. Duncan’s.
He credits the American space program of the 1960s with capturing
his interest as a boy of “seven or eight” in Paisley, Scotland.
He remembers the Gemini and Apollo projects and wanting to
know all about rockets. He read books on astronomy, then on
electronics. His expanding curiosity was fed by Christmas
gifts from his parents – electronics kits and microscopes. He
attended secondary school in Paisley and completed his B.Sc.
(British equivalent of a B.S.) degree in mathematical physics
from the University of Edinburgh in 1980. While working on
his doctorate at Oxford, he received the Carnegie Award from
the Carnegie Foundation and the James Chadwick Award from
the International School of Subnuclear Physics.
But as his interest in science grew, the Thatcher government
of the early 80s cut back severely on money allocated to science.
Dr. Duncan was a part of the brain drain from Great Britain,
where the attitude among scientists was “get a doctorate and
get the hell out.” Once in the U.S., he was a member of a
group which lobbied the British government to increase funding
for science. From 1983 to 1994, Dr. Duncan moved from fellowship
to fellowship in the U.S. He also published over 35 scientific
papers in journals such as Nuclear Physics, Physics Letters
and Physical Review. In spite of his achievements, his professional
road was not smooth. There were endless rounds of résumé submissions
and job interviews. He attended conferences and conducted
seminars in order to make his name known. “One of the things
I hated was knowing that every couple of years I had to be
applying for another job. I had to go through the same thing
again, send out the résumés, deal with rejection.”
That instability was one of the most important factors which
prompted him to leave his roller-coaster existence as an “itinerant
postdoc.” When he was in his twenties, moving to a new city
every two years and traveling around the world for conferences
had been exciting. By the time he was in his thirties, the
thrill was gone. He was also disheartened by the way the U.S.
physics community latched onto trends in research. There were
a lot of highly esoteric topics, in favor of more relevant
ones, being researched. “There was a flavor of the week or
flavor of the year for funding and if you weren’t doing it,
you wouldn’t get funded. People would be doing work that they
didn’t really, how shall I say, have the ability or the intuitive
insights to do well in, but they had to do it for the sake
of getting funding. That was a pretty awful scientific policy.”
Dr. Duncan also realized that because few experimental results
were being produced, theorists were left empty-handed. When
he started his graduate work, most research work being done
was confirming the standard model – work such as the discovery
of the W, at CERN in Geneva, and later of the discovery of
the bottom quark and top quark. Dr. Duncan felt he was running
out of “experimentally-anchored” research ideas. If the Supercollider
project had continued, there would have been a wealth of material.
The energy produced by the collision of beams of protons would
have created exotic particles, including the Higgs boson.
When the collider was abandoned with only 14 miles of the
tunnel complete, Dr. Duncan knew he had to leave physics.
Dr. Duncan met “wonderful people” during his two years at
the University of Iowa, but into his first year he saw that
his position held no possibility for tenure. Tenured slots
were not being allocated for theoretical physicists. Leaving
for law school may have been a blessing. He observes that
“a lot of people from my generation who got assistant professorship
positions dried up in a couple years.” Others who left physics
at the same time as he did migrated to Wall Street, but most
found the climate unstimulating. He didn’t see a job in industry
as an option because his skills would not have been seen as
valuable. In industry, “there isn’t much banging of quarks,”
he says. At one time, those leaving the field went to IBM,
and ended up using their mathematical skills as computer programmers.
The decision for a complete career change took him to the
University of Minnesota Law School in 1994. His parents asked,
“You still haven’t finished school?” Although the daily grind
was not appealing, he found studying law a challenge. In addition,
Dr. Duncan had always enjoyed teaching. It required a bit
of showmanship, skills which have transferred to his new life
as a lawyer. His analytical talents as a scientist were also
put to good use. In fact, the Chicago firm which he joined
in 1998, McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff, specializes
in the intellectual property needs of technology-driven companies.
Dr. Duncan’s technological expertise has been invaluable in
his practice. The former physicist has found being a lawyer
“much more enjoyable” than the tenuous life of a scientist.
He lists professional satisfaction, job security and financial
compensation as factors missing from his postdoctoral years.
He doesn’t see how scientists with families to support can
make ends meet. Though he’s no longer in the field, he still
subscribes to scientific journals. He says, “The nice thing
about not doing research anymore is now I can read other subjects.
I can look beyond what was my narrow specialty.” He also reads
papers by his old friends, “just to see what they’re up to.”
He is often asked to speak on law and patent law, and at times
he finds himself back in the classroom addressing graduate
students in physics. He has been invited by former colleagues
to talk, not about physics, but about careers outside science.
Dr. Duncan shares the realities of a career in science with
today’s students. “It going to be really tough. It’s only
about one out of ten people who probably ever make it to a
tenure position. Just because you’re doing a Ph.D. doesn’t
mean you’re going to automatically be a professor in ten years.
So at some point you might have to leave the field, and if
you don’t have any other skills that’s going to be hard.”
Dr. Malcolm Duncan has a whole new set of skills. His office
in Chicago is far from the underground tunnel in Texas. In
fact, he recently heard of a proposal to grow mushrooms in
the hole dug for the SSC outside Waxahachie. Fortunately,
Malcolm Duncan’s future is no longer determined by a big machine.
