as a career

Scientifically, biophysicists are in heavy demand and there are millions of dollars in support for biophysical science, pure and applied, but there are almost no biophysicists.

Because every biophysicist worth his salt can qualify as an engineer, a physicist, or a doctor, all well paid and respectable occupations, there is heavy pressure to divert young scientists from discovering biophysics.

A graduate student faced with the option of taking an engineering job now at $6000 or spending four more years of graduate work with a $l500 assistantship in order to qualify for a $5000 biophysics position has to want very badly to work in this field. Some of this is slowly being rectified but there is a tradition of poor pay and poor facilities in biological science which has first to be destroyed.

Biophysics, in order to preserve its birthright of symmetry between physics and biology, medicine and engineering, must not come under the domination of one discipline to the exclusion of another.

Traditionally these four scientific areas lie in at least three different and highly competitive university administrative domains, yet any educational or research activity must normally be housed and financed by one or the other.

Only extraordinary wisdom on the part of academic administrators can save biophysics from becoming lopsided or else falling between three stools.