Forget Albert

Forget Albert
Quick, give an example of a first name of a physicist. Albert? Benjamin? Sure, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin are famous examples. But their first names are rather unusual. The SPIRES HEPNAMES database reveals that David is the most common first name among male particle physicists and astrophysicists, while Maria leads the list of female physicists (see table). The database, which contains verified records of almost 8000 scientists, shows more than 2700 different first names.

Does the first name of a scientist reflect any correlation with the area of research chosen? Sometimes. For particle physicists named David, there is about an equal chance for them to be theorists or experimentalists. But, according to HEPNAMES, a physicist named Bruce is ten times more likely to be an experimentalist, while Jose is almost four times more likely to be a theorist.

Although scientists from English-speaking countries are the largest group of people in the database, the last 15 years saw the rise of Jose and Elena among the most frequent names of PhD recipients in high-energy physics. The internationalization of particle physics continues to grow. But most importantly: next time you meet a woman named Laura, don't be surprised if she is a physicist.

Heath O'Connell, Fermilab