Help! Need names of successful performance artists who went on to become great physicists!

My niece wants to become a singer. Naturally, I want to shift her away from a futile career that senselessly attempts to bring beauty into people's lives and encourage instead to make something of herself. The good news is, the girl has decided she likes physics!

So now I just need to point out lots of examples of people who made successful career changes from entertainment to science! Unfortunately, the only example that comes to my mind is gymnast Robert Millikan, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for discovery of the electron

Any ideas?

a few musicians who later became full-time physicists.

Annie Gosling, etc.

Dr. Fiorella Terenzi (wikipedia) :D

http://www.fiorella.com/

in dental school.....

Carlos Santana, on the other hand, quit high school at 16 to play guitar.


mark

Kira Roessler was a mechanical engineering student at the time - the band had to schedule gigs around her exam schedule

She now works doing sound mixing or something like that

but Hedy Lamarr (and George Antheil) was one of the inventors of the frequency hopping signal transmission technology that (among other things) the modern cell phone infrastructure is based on.

have done a lot with inventing and making new technologies for the performance of music, video, and so on.

Also Stockhausen, Kraftwerk, Moog, Wendy Carlos.

That's just off the top of my head.

Louis and Bebe Barron :)

She's working on a remake of the General Theory of Relativity that will revolutionize most of Justin Timberlake's songs.

How old is she? Is she already a professional singer? If not, examples of people who switched from singing to physics aren't really that relevant.

It seems pretty obvious that it's a lot easier for someone trained in physics who has a good voice to become a professional singer later than it is for someone trained in voice work to become a physicist.

If she's on her way to college, I would emphasize that it's all about keeping your options open. Start with the hardest possible thing while you're young and still have the energy and relatively few obligations. If it doesn't work out, switch to the next easier thing. Because there's no way that a few years into a four year music program with mounting debt and pressure to graduate that she's going to switch to an eight year physics program.

I wouldn't listen to anybody's advice, no matter how good it was, so I think I'm reluctant to try to give her any advice. On the other hand, some interesting biographical snippets might encourage her to "keep options open" as you suggest.

and seriously, the worst mistake of my entire life was majoring in English and not taking any math or science classes in college. It's sooo much easier for math and science majors to get humanities type jobs than vice versa.

I have an MA in English which is completely and absolutely useless, especially in this economy and I'm trying to get back into college at 32 to study urban planning, which isn't even a hard-core math/science discipline, but without any of those types of classes on my transcript it is a *bitch*. I spent nine years in college and came out unprepared for any kind of stable job. Now I'm looking at going back for two more and going even deeper in debt. Best case scenario, I'm going to be 36-37 before I'm done paying for my education. Scratch home-ownership, retirement before 65 and having a family goodbye.

If it were my own kid, I would be borderline fascistic and refuse to pay for a college degree unless the major was math/science/engineering/IT/nursing/something with a clear and realistic career trajectory. She can minor in music and take classes in her free time. Or she can double major in physics and music without breaking too much of a sweat. Just as long as the math/science is prominently in there.

to talk about. I mean, if you want a conversation-killing line at a party, try answering "What do you do?" with "Oh, I'm investigate the computational complexity of associative composition rules." If I'd been smart, I would have studied, say, chocolate: then everyone would have had an opinion and would have been interested in conversing about it

English can be a useful major, if you use your imagination a bit: one of my friends from grad school took his MA in English and went to work as communications director for a national non-profit

This happened to me more than once.

Strike up a conversation at a party in college...
other person: So, what do you study/major in?
Me: I have a double major in physics & philosophy. Wait, where are you going?



Although I must say that if I did it all over again I'd still keep the philosophy major. Best thing in the world to study.

because he had thought he was too smart to become a philosopher and not smart enough to become a physicist

That's unfair to some good philosophers, of course: philosophy departments have often been home territory for mathematical logicians, and philosophical considerations have motivated some excellent physics

There is NO DEGREE, in ANY SUBJECT, that is useless.

If you came out of nine years of college and were unprepared for any kind of stable job, that's not the fault of the degree. Sorry to be harsh, but I am sick and tired of this old canard of believing that a) college education is only about getting a job, and b) that there are some degrees that are totally worthless for getting jobs.

Bullshit.

I worked in a top consulting firm, and we had consultants with MBAs, of course, but also a lot with degrees in philosophy, art history, English, mathematics, social work, languages/linguistics, librarian science, literature, sociology, and even medical doctors, physicists, and engineers.

Same at the investment bank I worked at, and pretty every other business. Some specific degrees are good (and necessary) if you want to do something specific - engineering or a medical doctor or a licensed architect or accountant - but everything else is limited only by one's imagination, one's drive, one's desires, one's motivation, and one's creativity.

Please stop spreading the false and hopeless idea that some degrees are "worthless" and that people shouldn't follow their passions, but instead just go get some good "job training" degree.

there's a lot of passions you can pursue without getting a college degree. I never said "don't follow your passions". I said "don't spend nine years and $135,000 studying novels you could read in your free time." I wouldn't spend that kind of time or money again on *anything* that didn't practically guarantee stable middle class employment. Repaying student loans well into your late thirties because you can't find a job that pays more than $32,000/year sucks about as hard as anything can.

Of course you *can* theoretically get an entry-level job in marketing, publishing, journalism, etc. with an MA in English but you could get all of those jobs with a degree in just about anything else too. I worked with teachers who had psychology, business, library science degrees etc. The difference? They could leave easily and do something else while I had to compete with communications majors for marketing, journalism majors for journalism, even education and linguistics majors for promotions in teaching.

"Everything else is limited only by one's imagination, one's drive, one's desires, one's motivation, and one's creativity." Oh yeah, and 10% unemployment. I've been unemployed for a year and can't even get interviews at the friggin' grocery store. But obviously that's my fault because I'm not imaginative, driven, motivated and creative enough right?

I bought the whole "college is for exploration, follow your dreams, all learning is equally useful, la la la" bit hook line and sinker and all I can think now is "Jesus, why didn't someone push me to study something that would keep my options open?"

It's fine if you're independently wealthy to piddle away decades in college self-actualizing and studying modernist poetry. It's a totally different story if you don't have the option of living off a trust fund for the rest of your life.

You have your whole life to pursue your passions. College *is* about providing credentials to employers. If it wasn't, why would they insist on giving you grades? Get a degree that gives you the option of a stable job and then take extension classes in creative writing or theater set design or whatever. Because, honestly, how many 18-year olds really know what their life's passion is going to be and whether or not they have the talent and drive to turn that passion into a steady income?

I stand by my assertion that with the currently skyrocketing cost of education and the economic prospects for this nation you would have to be off your head to get a degree based strictly on your "passions" with no thought towards a realistically obtainable career trajectory.

:)

who invented many things including the first working artificial heart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Winchell

Here's a rare photo from his performing days...

invented spread spectrum radio communications

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamar

Popular teen actress in the early 1990's. She quit acting, went to UCLA, and has a PhD in neuroscience.

I toss the question mark in there because she hasn't really done anything since getting the degree. She got married as a grad student and started having kids just as she was awarded the degree. She's a (fairly eccentric) stay at home mom nowadays.

But she did make that leap, and went from actress to legitimate neuroscientist.

was a semi-pro goalie.