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In physics, Nobel Prizes are viewed as impacting people’s legacies to science rather than any financial rewards. Most physicists aren’t particularly concerned with money — they’re paid fairly and have a good life. They care more about their research funding than their take home pay. Most physicists care about their legacies at some level and so the impact of being “robbed” of a Nobel Prize should be viewed as having their legacies being diminished.At the same time, no one expects a Nobel Prize — one can make a lifetime of important contributions and never have the stars align for it be “Nobel”-worthy.There are two famous examples in the Physics Nobel Prize:Lise Meitner is the worse example. She was arguably the intellectual leader of the group that discovered Uranium fission. Because she was a Jewish woman in Nazi Germany, she suffered immense discrimination. The Nobel Committee opened the deliberations into the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and determined that her exclusion from Otto Hahn’s prize was “unjust.” See this Physics Today article[1] for additional details:Meitner's exclusion, however, points to other flaws in the decision process, and to four factors in particular: the difficulty of evaluating an interdisciplinary discovery, a lack of expertise in theoretical physics, Sweden's scientific and political isolation during the war, and a general failure of the evaluation committees to appreciate the extent to which German persecution of Jews skewed the published scientific record.Vera Rubin measured the galactic rotation curves of galaxies and discovered that there was not enough visible matter to correspond to the implied gravity. This became the first basis for existence of dark matter (there is so much more now). It is completely baffling why by the late 1990s or early 2000s this wasn’t considered minimally a discovery that requires gravity to change its behavior (arguably a more radical discovery) or a new form of gravitating matter that makes up the majority of the mass in the Universe. The discovery of dark energy was awarded the Nobel Prize before Vera Rubin’s death, even though it is no more significant and arguably less established (though still deserving of a Nobel Prize).Another less clear and less known example is Erick Weinberg — he was a precocious graduate student at Harvard working on tons of important work in Quantum Field Theory in the 1970s. Politzer, his fellow student, was given a problem by their graduate advisor, Sydney Coleman. Erick Weinberg didn’t have bandwidth to do the problem himself, but he helped David Politzer. The lore is that Erick ended up doing the whole problem — though didn't realize that lasting impact that -11/3 (the result of the calculation) would be (is arguably the most important result in theoretical physics in the second half of the 20th century). That result became known as asymptotic freedom and discovered the origin of the Strong Force. Politzer shared the Nobel Prize with Frank Wilczek and David Gross in 2004. Amusingly Wilczek and Gross initially got the sign wrong and no one believed Politzer’s results. Politzer doggedly convinced Coleman that he was right and Wilczek and Gross found their mistake. This account is contested: Politzer claims that he never saw Weinberg’s result, Weinberg claims it was in his thesis. Weinberg put his thesis online in 2005[2] (after the Nobel speech by Politzer called the Dilemma of Attribution in 2004[3] ) which had the result — I personally haven’t gone to the Harvard Library to confirm Erick Weinberg’s thesis hasn’t been altered, but he has always seemed very honest and he would have more to lose (he’s editor of Physical Review D and would lose his standing in the field with a fabrication). This should be relegate to historians to figure out (it may already have been) — chances are both of these accounts are true and false.All mathematicians, many theoretical physicists. There is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics. Why who knows? There is the Fields Medal, though that is arguably of a different nature. There are historical reasons for leaving off mathematics, but the list of prizes has grown over the years (notably medicine in 1901 and economics in 1968).To win a Nobel Prize in Physics as a theoretical physicist, you must have your theory experimentally established. This has precluded many luminaries like Ed Witten and Steven Hawking from winning Nobel Prizes though their work is far more significant than many awarded Nobel Prizes. This has led to bizarre reasoning for some theoretical physicists winning the Nobel Prize — ’t Hooft and Veltman had to wait until the discovery of the top quark to come up with an “experimental” verification of their work that established broken gauge theories are renormalizable. This was stupid — there was zero, literally zero, doubt that their work was right and the experiment did nothing to convince anyone that their work was more right.Footnotes[1] https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.881933?journalCode=pto[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0507214.pdf[3] The dilemma of attribution

The five biggest changes I've noticed in myself during my three years of being a postdoc are:Rejection doesn't phase me one bit. Academia is more or less synonymous with rejection, but it isn't until your postdoc when it ramps up into silly territory. I now pretty much assume that everything I do -- ranging from experiments to applying for funding and jobs -- is going to fail, yet still do it anyways. The massive number of competitive things you need to do as a postdoc either inures you to "failure" or paralyzes you pretty quickly.I'm much more aware of just how little I know. I think this is a trajectory that starts in graduate school for most people, but essentially starting over in a new field with the wisdom and experience about research accumulated as a graduate student really drives home just how huge even the smallest of subfields is. It also doesn't help that my professional skepticism is at unprecedentedly high levels, which makes me pretty unsure about all of the things I think I know, too. I'm definitely turning into one of those zen scientist-philosophers who feels like they don't know shit.I'm way more risk averse. Given that my time is much more limited and valuable, and expectations for my output are much higher, I tend to spend that time on things that I'm either obligated to do or know will work. My science is a hell of a lot less creative as a result, but the world of "grown-up" science where you have to both do research and get funding for it dramatically decreases just how willing you are to go play. This is probably one of the biggest weaknesses of the institution of academic research, but it's way bigger than me and there's not much I can do to fight it.I'm not really particularly good at any one thing. Forming your own proto-lab basically means that you have to do it all. From the tedious benchwork of actually doing experiments, to getting and administrating grants, every last aspect of being a professional scientist is on me. This encompasses an absolutely crazy skillset (everything from microbial husbandry to navigating federal bureaucracy to doing my very best used-car salesman impression when I hit the road for meetings), none of which I can really afford to specialize in. As a result, I can't really single out one thing that I think I'm particularly good at.My tolerance for institutional bullshit hovers just slightly north of zero. As my exposure to it has increased during my postdoc, my tolerance for the sausage-making of science has dropped -- this will ultimately end my career in academia. There's so much inefficient non-science shit that enables us to do science, which (at least for me) makes it difficult to justify spending my time on research in this setting. Paperwork, administration, forms, committees, etc., etc., etc. are more or less a squall of crap that I can't see myself doing forever.

I thought I was prepared. I thought it would be a victory lap. I thought I would feel happy, and relieved… That’s not what happened. Even though they still said “Congratulations Dr. Lapierre-Landry!”May 10thI finally got the OK from my advisor to start scheduling my defense. I had six faculty members on my committee, and I had been told over and over again how “The hardest part of defending is scheduling the actual defense!”At the time, I was ready to say “those people were right!” I was trying to schedule something for the summer, and most of my committee members were going to be travelling or attending conferences for most of it. I remember just staring at this Doodle calendar as every week of every month was slowly getting filled in. I was losing hope I would be able to graduate in the summer semester, and there was nothing I could do about it.May 25thAfter two weeks of agony (or so it felt like it), there finally was one single day, July 5th, where it looked like everyone on my committee would be able to make it. I officially confirmed it via email. I booked one of the really nice auditorium. I booked my flight ticket and a hotel room (I had been living out-of-state for years at that point).I remember thinking “Alright, the hard part is over!”June 21stWriting my thesis felt like birthing a child after a really successful and healthy pregnancy. And by that I mean: “Why is it so painful and so uncomfortable to push out this amazing thing that I’ve created, that I love, and that will be beautiful once it’s out?”This was a thesis-by-published-work, meaning the central part was made out of papers I had already written and published, and I “just” had to write a long intro chapter + conclusion to wrap it all up. And gosh! Was… it… painful…!Just staring at the page thinking: “I don’t have anything nice to say about you anymore, ok? I’ve said it all already!”But I did it. I wrote the thing. It was good. I sent it out to my committee members.June 30thI had two weeks to work on the actual powerpoint presentation for my defense. Expected format: ~40 minutes. Expected audience: Department faculty members, fellow grad students, friends and family, committee members.Now here’s a thing I know about myself: I can make a kick-ass presentation. I can put together really polished slides. I can create really good looking figures. And I can get on that stage, smile, look confident, and go through the whole thing like I own the place. I can even crack some jokes sometimes!So I actually enjoyed the process. I had a bank of previously used slides I had made over the years, and that gave me time to create some new, even better ones for certain sections.I practiced the talk in front of my lab a few times and got really good comments.I thought: “I got this!”July 4thIt was the day before my defense. I flew into the city where my university is. I recognized my old neighborhood, the restaurants I used to go to. I met up with friends, and said “hi” to the new people in the department. My parents arrived later in the evening, and it was great to see them.I thought “I’m ready.” I looked at my slides one last time. I really did know my stuff.Even though it was July 4th in the U.S. I went to bed really early. The big day was coming up!July 5th - The day of the defenseI really didn’t sleep well. Nonsensical dreams about arriving late to my defense and whatnot. I was just happy it was the morning and I could get out of bed.After breakfast I went to check out the auditorium, and tested the projector, the microphone, my computer. I was fairly calm. Everything was going according to plan.In the afternoon, I went to get changed. It was a new outfit and I thought it made me look really smart.My friends came in. They had brought cookies and snacks for the audience, which was great. Tons of students from the department came and I was just really happy I wouldn’t be presenting in front of an empty room.At 1pm, it started.I’m a good presenter, and I had a really good set of slides to present. This was a big room and a big audience, and I was just really excited to present my work. It all went well.After 40 minutes of presentation, I got a few easy questions from the audience. I thanked everyone, and then the audience stepped out. It was time to answer questions from my committee.This part is a blur.I remember answering questions really calmly, with a smile. I remember saying things like “this is a really interesting question!” or “Yes, we actually tried that, it’s great that you’re bringing it up!”But the whole thing felt like people attacking the beautiful baby I had just given birth to. I know that’s not what my committee members were doing. I know they were just asking questions like any other committee would do. I know they were not trying to be mean.But it felt like I had to graciously tell people to stop kicking my baby and to just let me rest after this long and difficult birthing process.I didn’t like that part very much.After what turned out to be an hour and a half of questions, my committee asked me to step out. I just felt so drained, so fragile, so stressed, so overwhelmed, so shaky…I stepped out and my parents and my friends were there, just waiting for me. I said “it went well” and it was time to wait.Five minutes later, one of my committee member came out and said “do you have Form XYZ for us to fill out?”And I don’t know why, but that’s what made me crack.See, I had printed a bunch of forms for them to fill out, but apparently nobody had told me I needed ONE MORE form, and now we didn’t have the form, it wasn’t there, they couldn’t fill it, and that was that.And even though it wasn’t a big deal, for me it was. As if after all this work, all this preparation, all of what I had given… there was… this missing form… because nobody had thought to tell me about it.I just couldn’t handle it. I don’t know why, I just couldn’t. It became really hard not to start crying.In the end it was fine. They just said I could get the form filled out later. They all came out. They said “Congratulations Dr. Lapierre-Landry!” and gave me a copy of my dissertation with comments written in it.Everybody cheered.My lab mates had decorated a conference room, and there was champagne and cookies.I was just shaking, and trying not to cry.I didn’t feel relieved. I didn’t feel happy. All I could think was “Don’t cry, it’s going to make people uncomfortable.”All the stress I had been bottling up was coming out in a series of unforgiving waves. Apparently I had been stressed all this time. I didn’t even know.I kinda kept a straight face for the rest of the evening. I even (maybe, a little bit) had a good time as I went out to celebrate. I was just trying not to think.I didn’t sleep well at all. I hadn’t read any of the comments my committee had given me yet, and all night I dreamt that they were asking me to re-do half my experiments and that I would never actually graduate. It was just really difficult to find some sleep.July 6thI woke up, and the first thing I did is read the comments my committee left me. The vast majority of them were formatting comments. Things like “there should be a space here,” or “Add a page break here.” A small minority of comments were some helpful writing suggestions, like “this paragraph could be clearer,” or “a citation would be helpful here.”I felt somewhat relieved. Still felt weird, overwhelmed, shaky. But it was ok. I was going to be alright.July 30thIt took me three weeks before I was even able to start working on my thesis again. Three weeks of staying home, taking time off, watching TV, spending time on Quora, and just overall taking a well-deserved rest.Addressing the (very minor, but still) comments I had received was like pulling teeth. It was like asking me, three weeks after having birthed my metaphoric baby if I would like to watch the birthing video. And I didn’t want to.But I did go back to make the changes. And it was ok. And it made the whole text better anyway.I eventually submitted all the paperwork. And a month later I got my degree.Doctor of Philosophy.It took me approximately six months to start feeling happy and proud of my accomplishment. Now a year later, I feel good about it. I think I’m pretty awesome for what I’ve accomplished.Still, not the happiest of experiences.