Private Industry
Unlimited opportunities are found in private industry. Most industries have extensive research and development programs, as well as production activities. In addition to the industries that are engaged primarily in the design and fabrication of nuclear and electronic equipment, hundreds of industries use radioisotopes and radiation in tracing, testing, development, inspection, and quality control.
Opportunities are open to the scientist who wishes to work for himself. He may organize his own company to provide self-employment or he may serve as a private consultant.
Educational Organizations
With the growing demand for scientists comes an increasing need for science teachers—good science teachers—from the elementary through the university graduate-school level. The scientist who enters the teaching profession need not feel that he turns his back on a research career. Thousands of significant investigations and discoveries are made at colleges and universities where science faculty members combine teaching with research.
Although the basic salary scale for the science teacher is not normally as high as that of the industrial scientist, this situation is improving. Moreover, many college faculty members augment their salaries and keep in touch with new developments by acting as part-time consultants to industry and government. A scientific teaching career offers certain advantages: frequently the professor enjoys greater freedom than the industrial scientist in budgeting time and channeling interests, and teachers also experience the satisfaction of developing human minds.
Hospitals
Hospitals and medical research institutions must have highly competent scientific staffs. Besides physicians they need chemists, biochemists, biologists, bacteriologists, and often physicists and veterinarians.
State and Local Governments
Scientists hold important posts in state and local government ranging from the director of a state health department to the chemist in a police laboratory to the radiation safety advisor on a civil-defense commission. As the states assume more and more responsibility for licensing and regulating nuclear and other scientific development, the need for state-employed scientific staff members will grow.