HEP education
| HEP physicists’ educations Details can be found at: www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/ hepnames/stats.undergrad. world.shtml  Source: SPIRES HEPNames database |
SPIRES is not only an archive for scientific papers; it also provides information on researchers. The HEPNames database contains the names and verified records of over 7000 high-energy physicists, from graduate student to professor emeritus. They are affiliated with more than 1100 institutions worldwide, one third of which are US institutions. They received their PhDs from more than 600 institutions around the globe, including 130 universities in the United States. The list of undergraduate institutions that they attended is even longer: 900 places worldwide, of which 250 are US institutions.
So, who has provided these high-energy physicists with their education? Analyzing only the 5200 records of HEP physicists for which both their undergraduate and graduate affiliations are known, eight institutions rank in the top-ten lists for both undergraduate and graduate education (see table 1). The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been the favorite school among high-energy physicists. The most popular foreign institutions are the University of Tokyo (undergraduate studies) and the University of Cambridge (PhD program).
Of the 2200 records with a US PhD degree and information on undergraduate affiliation, over one third show foreign undergraduate institutions. Table 2 shows the top ten foreign countries that have provided students for US PhD programs leading to careers in high-energy physics. The reverse flow of students is rather small. Of the 3000 HEP physicists who received a PhD from a foreign institution, only 54 had been American undergraduates.
Heath O'Connell, Fermilab
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