Purists in physics departments cringe these days, as more of the faithful leave the scientific fold. Stories of rocket scientists making a name for themselves at Salmon Brothers and Goldman Sachs abound.

And such stories aren't purely theoretical, they are grounded in reality. "It's sort of this mythical story that turns out to be true," says Derrick E. Bass '95, co-president of the Society of Physics Students.

In evaluating the reasons why physicists are pursuing business careers, employment seems to be a strong motivating factor. "Right now the job market in physics itself is pretty dismal, especially with the recent cut of the SSC. It really decimates one branch of physics," says Bass. The SSC, the Superconducting Supercollider, was an $11 billion particle accelerator in Texas whose funding was cut by Congress in October.

Jed Dempsey and Ashraf Hanna are both physics Ph.Ds from Harvard now doing management consulting for McKinsey & Co. Dempsey, who works in San Fransisco, had considered a business career while studying physics. "I knew of all the limitations associated with a physics career. I kept my eyes open and did the Ph.D to fulfill a personal goal," says empsey. "I knew the reasoning would come in useful."

It is precisely these type of thinking skills that companies such as McKinsey are actively pursuing, recruiting not only MBAs but Ph.Ds in technical categories, of which physics recruits are the most numerous. Hanna says that whether it's evaluating a plane's trajectory when flyingfrom Boston to L.A. or analyzing a stock, thethought process is the same.

"What you really learn to do as a physicist istake the world and translate it into mathematicalequations, solve the equations, and translate themback into the physical world," says Hanna.

Margaret L. Newhouse, assistant director forPh.D Careers at OCS, says that "physicists have aset of skills that the non-academic world values."New house says that this is the first year OCS hashad formal business recruiting of Ph.Ds bycompanies such as McKinsey, Monitor and Banker'sTrust.

But physicists aren't making theirpresence felt only in the business world.Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor ofHistory of Science Emeritus Gerald Holton saysthat law and politics are other areas physicsPh.Ds are pursuing.

"About half the bills that go through Congresshave a markedly prominent science or technicalcomponent," says Holton. "So people who havescience backgrounds are very badly needed inCongress or as staffers." Currently, the head ofthe Congressional committee on Science, Space andTechnology is George Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.) who hasa Ph.D in physics.

Then there are individuals like Michael S.Pavloff '88, who concentrated in physics and wenton to become a gourmet chef at Boston'sL'Espalier. Pavloff's career choice was notmotivated by the physics job market, but rather bya genuine interest in cooking. L'Espalier's owner,a former government concentrator at Harvard,offered Pavloff a job during his senior year.

After a year of cooking, Pavloff went on towork as an engineer. "The thing that drove me awayfrom cooking is in the end, no matter how creativeit is, it's not intellectually stimulating. Theone thing I needed was to keep my mind alive."

As Pavloff illustrates, physics graduates'decisions to pursue alternate careers are oftenmotivated by genuine interests rather than poorjob prospects doing physics.

For Rohan J. Hoare, a physics Ph.D who begantaking business courses in graduate school, hiseventual career choice was "a matter of someevolving interests." Hoare now works for McKinseyin Los Angeles.

Yet, the job market still remains aconcern not only for physics students, but alsofor Harvard's physics department. Howard Georgi,chair of the department, says, "Given theuncertainty in the physics job market, we want tokeep flexible and open."

With no required thesis for undergraduatehonors physics concentrators and relatively few,though difficult courses to take, Georgi saysphysics lends itself to interdisciplinary tracksof study.

When asked whether interdisciplinary studyopens up career and research opportunities forphysics concentrators, Georgi says, "That's ourtheory, although we're not able to prove that."