<story><title>The Sad Story of Heisenberg&apos;s Doctoral Oral Exam (1998)</title><url>https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199801/heisenberg.cfm</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>erikpukinskis</author><text>This highlights what was a huge misconception for me about a PhD. I thought a PhD was about making an original contribution to my field. I thought Academia was a place where you took risks in pursuit of knowledge, and a PhD was your first real go at it.&lt;p&gt;In retrospect (I&amp;#x27;m a PhD dropout) the PhD is really more about training in the fundamentals of scholarship. It&amp;#x27;s about building up background knowledge, and learning the mechanics of research and publishing.&lt;p&gt;The actual scholarly contribution matters &lt;i&gt;almost not at all&lt;/i&gt;. This is why faculty will pressure you to pick a conservative project... the results are besides the point. The point is demonstrating that you can do all the steps. Because lots of great people can only do half the steps. A PhD means you can do all.&lt;p&gt;Once you have your PhD, then its your career on the line and you can do whatever you want. Before that point, you&amp;#x27;re really working on borrowed (from your advisor) time, and as much as it might seem like you are supposed to blaze a path, they really just want you to show that you can walk in a straight line.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Sad Story of Heisenberg&apos;s Doctoral Oral Exam (1998)</title><url>https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199801/heisenberg.cfm</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>archgoon</author><text>&amp;quot;But that fall Heisenberg&amp;#x27;s worried father wrote to the famed Gottingen experimentalist James Franck, asking Franck to teach his boy some experimental physics. Franck did his best, but could not overcome Heisenberg&amp;#x27;s complete lack of interest and gave up the effort. If Heisenberg was going to survive at all in physics it would be purely as a theorist.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I had not heard this part; and might shed some additional light onto why the German atomic project was significantly behind. When the lead of your project is a famous physicist, but who isn&amp;#x27;t strongly grounded in experiment, but who nevertheless feels like he can&amp;#x27;t simply be a manager and must have input, you&amp;#x27;re likely going to have problems.&lt;p&gt;Maybe not though; be an interesting line of investigation though. Anyone know if this was a documented issue? I know that Heisenburg had seriously overestimated the amount of necessary fissile material needed for a bomb.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.nuclearsecrecy.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;what-did-the-nazis-know-about-the-manhattan-project&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.nuclearsecrecy.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;what-did-the-nazis...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>