The future supply of American physicists

Abstract

Physicists-in-training have been declining in number since 1950. This decrease has been relatively sharp for undergraduate physics majors. The numbers of graduate students in physics have decreased only slightly, but this reduction seems likely to continue until about 1958. The production of doctorates in physics reached a peak in the academic year 1952–53 just closed. It is to be expected that physics PhD's will continue to be graduated in slowly diminishing numbers until about 1962, after which there should be substantial increases.