A Ph.D. Is Not Enough: A Guide to Survival in Science

Author: Peter J. Feibelman
List Price: $16.50
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ISBN: 0201626632
Publisher: Perseus Publishing (January, 1994)
Sales Rank: 8,209
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 4 out of 5
Very informative book
This short book gives a lot of advices that should be carefully considered for all budding scientists. Of course, if you are a tenured university professor, this might not be the book for you -- but it might be valuable to your students.

My current academic status is a graduate student in biophysics. I am a weighing my options of either going to industry or academia after graduation. This book has given me a lot of worthwhile suggestions. There are certainly some factors that I haven't even considered until I read this book. The book also taught me a lot of 'survival skills' that I should start practicing.

I believe that a lot of my peers are going through graduate school with ignorance on skills that are not directly related to physics, such as presentation skills, publishing and writing skills, and communication skills. These are probably more important in finding a secure job than a high IQ brain.

One of the main goal of this book is to help us consider the ingredients needed for a secure and stable scientific career. I believe this will save some of us a lot of headaches in the future.

For negatives, I believe that the author tries to assume that we (the audience) are all high caliber students and postdocs. I definitely don't consider myself someone who will make any major contribution to science, or being capable of publishing 1 paper every year or so. I don't know if I can even produce 1 publication within my entire graduate career. Furthermore, I really wish there were more in-depth discussion on finding the right mentor in the academic and industrial world. Despite the cons, I still think this book should be read by all serious researchers.


Rating: 4 out of 5
A Big Little Book
This book should be standard issue to graduate students (and any PhD who did not get it graduate school). It's a reminder that sheer brain power alone is not sufficient to be a successful scientist. It's also important to have a research plan and be able to articulate that plan. Indeed, the central theme of the book is the importance of communication at levels of a science career (talks, papers, grants, interviews, etc.). His guidelines for paper writing and giving talks are especially fine. Feibelman is a solid state physicist, but nearly everything he says was equally applicable to my field (astronomy).

I didn't give this excellent book five stars because it is such a short book, and short on concrete detail and example. If you're serious about the issues discussed in the book, you'll want to pick up one or more related books out there (which often cite this one positively, by the way). Don't skip this one, though. You can read it in a hour or two every few years as a reminder/checklist about what you should be doing.


Rating: 5 out of 5
Excellent book
This is a great book for absolutely anyone working on his/her PhD or looking for career advice at the end of their PhD. In fact, it will be a great help even to those who are long finished with their PhD's especially if they are currently advising their own students.
The writing style is very friendly and straightforward, as if the author is talking to you, sitting across from you. More importantly, the advise is very practical and comes from someone who has a lot of experience in academia.

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