Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Know any chemists working in industry in their 90s?

C&EN's Beth Halford would like to talk to a industry chemist (broadly defined) still working in their 90s.

Anyone have an idea? If so, contact B_Halford@acs/dot/org (note spam-proofing) 
at

10 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 3, 2015 at 2:39 PM

    Dude, I'm just hoping to be working in the industry in my 50s!

    ReplyDelete
  2. milkshakenJune 3, 2015 at 3:13 PM

    Dude, what kind of self-respecting industrial chemist still lives into their 90s

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousJune 4, 2015 at 2:34 PM

      What, we're all supposed to curl up and die before then?
      I for one plan on sticking around just so I can bore the young'uns with tales of paper notebooks and manually-shimmed NMRs....

      Delete
  3. Johnny Q. PublicJune 3, 2015 at 4:42 PM

    Always great to see that C&EN is providing hard-hitting research directed towards the critical employment issues faced by its members! (at least 0.00001% of them).

    ReplyDelete
  4. WavefunctionJune 3, 2015 at 7:01 PM

    The guy from Lorenzo's Oil

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJune 3, 2015 at 9:42 PM

    The oldest industrial chemist I've ever known, kept working till he was 70, by his own choice. Of course, this was 20 years ago, when companies would allow people to do this. Nowadays, an industrial chemist is lucky if they are still employed till age 60. At the same company, I know someone who recently struggled to make it to 57, just so he would qualify for a full pension.
    The only 90+ year old chemists I would think, are those who own their own small companies.
    Certainly when you read the obituaries in C & E News, the recently deceases are often in their 80s and 90s. But then almost always, if they were industrial chemists, it says that they retired 20-30 years earlier.

    ReplyDelete
  6. KTJune 3, 2015 at 10:29 PM

    It's common at small companies to keep a semiretired 70-something year old chemist around part-time; I know of several cases.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousJune 4, 2015 at 2:28 PM

    the only chemist i know of working in his or her 90's (industrial or academia) is stork.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Generic ChemistJune 9, 2015 at 11:53 PM

    George Just at McGill was definitely at least in his mid-70's when he fell over from a heart attack (I think) in the lab.

    Frankly, the shitty and inconsistent job market will probably result in a similar outcome (eventually) for yours truly. Pension? Retirement? haha

    ReplyDelete
  9. NMHJune 10, 2015 at 9:40 AM

    Well, if most faculty want to, er, "work" until they drop dead, why not you?

    ReplyDelete

looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20