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.