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Review: Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers, by Joseph C. Hermanowicz. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 323pp. $55.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780226327617

This book is a sequel to a previous book by the same author. The earlier book, The Stars Are Not Enough: Scientists—Their Passions and Professions (1998), examined the same group of physics professors at an earlier stage of their careers. Together these books provide valuable information about the characteristics of academic careers in physics and of the institutions in which they take place, as well as about physicists’ perceptions of their careers and how these perceptions change over time. The present book is based on 60 in-depth interviews with physics faculty, almost all of whom were selected randomly and interviewed for the previous book. The subjects were located at six American universities that represented three levels of prestige— top, middle, and bottom—using rankings of graduate programs by the National Research Council. Because of the small sample size, the author uses small-N comparisons of his three institutional cases, instead of statistical analysis. He presents his data in cross-tab tables and includes lengthy quotations from his interviews. His focus is continuity and change in academic careers, using three theoretical perspectives, sociology of occupations for the study of careers, sociology of the life course for his analysis of the effects of aging on careers, and Mertonian sociology of science for his study of academic stratification. Joseph Hermanowicz’s major variables are age and institutional location. At different levels of prestige, environments of these universities constitute elite worlds, where the emphasis is placed on research; pluralist worlds, where both research and teaching are valued; and communitarian worlds, which promote teaching. The author provides detailed information on the types of changes that have taken place in these institutions since he conducted his first study. In general, conditions for research in institutions at all three levels have deteriorated due to a decline in the availability of federal funding, which has produced a situation in which there is ‘‘constraint and growing stringency.’’ Hermanowicz’s goals are to find out how satisfaction with academic careers in the three types of universities has changed over time and how it varies by the prestige of the university in which it is taking place. Dividing his sample into three cohorts, earlyto mid-career, midto late-career, and lateto post-career, Hermanowicz finds substantial differences in perceptions of their careers and of their institutions among members of these cohorts and within each cohort, by prestige of institution. Most members of the youngest cohort start out with high ambitions for scientific achievement, but by mid-career, only the physicists at elite institutions have retained those ambitions. Physicists at mid-rank institutions stress teaching as well as research while those at low-rank institutions are primarily oriented toward teaching. Academic location is strongly correlated with level of satisfaction. Physicists at elite institutions are very satisfied with their careers while those at the other types of institutions are not. These differences between physicists with different types of careers become more pronounced in the midto late-career stage. Satisfaction with their institutions and with the scientific reward system remains high among elite physicists but plummets among communitarians and, to a considerable extent, among pluralists. Paradoxically, Hermanowicz finds that satisfaction with their careers and with the scientific reward system decreases among elite scientists when they are on the verge of retirement or after retirement while satisfaction with their careers increases during this period among those who are located at less prestigious schools. He explains these findings by the fact that rewards at prestigious schools diminish with age along with positive perceptions of the scientific reward system while, among physicists at less prestigious schools, scientific rewards cease to be important. At the same time, physicists at less prestigious schools become more Reviews 169