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How to Succeed in Science Without Being Single

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By Mary Beckman

So much of the scientific life seems suited to being single: long hours, high stress, moving from job to job, a lot of travel. But like loons on a romantic moonlit lake, scientists insist on pairing up over the lab bench or after an awe-inspiring evening seminar. The relationship issues that the intrepid lovers face are likely to be shared with other two-income households, but the career issues are all science.

Love (and a Good Job) Is All You Need

Lovebirds who find themselves sharing pipette tips instead of champagne bubbles aren't all that different from other couples, says the neuropathologist John Trojanowski, who has been married for 26 years to Virginia Lee, a biochemist. Together, they founded the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research at the University of Pennsylvania's medical school, where she now serves as director and he as co-director. "It's all about being in love, not working together," he says, admitting that aside from their top-flight research, the two are known for "fighting a lot, but really [the arguments] are animated discussions. It's important to work out all the issues."

Many scientists see benefits to having a spouse or partner in the biz. Connie Nugent, an assistant professor of cell biology at the University of California at Riverside, married Jeffrey Bachant, also an assistant professor of cell biology at Riverside, when they were graduate students together. She says one plus is that scientist-spouses understand the science "lifestyle."

But having your parter for a colleague also has its drawbacks, says Karen De Valois, a professor and chairwoman of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. "Sometimes it's hard to separate work from home," she says. She married Russell De Valois, already an established professor in Berkeley's vision-sciences department, 33 years ago. "The advantage is you always have someone to bounce your ideas off of and get advice from," she says.

Persis Drell and James Welch -- two physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, in California -- married right out of graduate school and proceeded to have three children, all the while pursuing and obtaining good postdoctoral and faculty positions. Says Ms. Drell of their nearly 20-year marriage: "We were always trying to end up with maximal happiness. That's a complex equation to optimize."

'It's Better to Both Be Unhappy'

If scientists were smart, they would establish their careers and then find each other across crowded conference rooms. But as the couples above make clear, love waits for no researcher. The options facing academic couples in the sciences are straightforward: They could find really great positions at the same time and in the same area; they could find great jobs in two different regions of the country; one could get a really great job and the other find less-desirable employment; or they could both suffer with their last-choice jobs.

Nugent and Bachant cast their net as wide as possible when they looked for faculty positions. "We applied anywhere two jobs were advertised or in a big-enough city that we thought the other person could find a job," says Nugent. Although they were ready to settle for one person having a less-than-perfect position (which of them would suffer that fate had never been firmly determined), they were able to find two faculty positions together. But that doesn't mean they didn't make compromises when they found postdoctoral jobs at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "The sacrifice [in picking postdocs] was on both of our parts -- to live in Texas," she laughs.

Drell and Welch tried to be as flexible as possible to achieve their clear priority: to be in the same place, together, even if they both had to take less-than-attractive jobs. They didn't rule out geographical areas or nonfaculty positions. "You don't want to get into a situation where one is happy and one unhappy," Welch says. "There's too much stress on the marriage to be in that situation. It's better to both be unhappy."

The two members of an academic couple are often at different points in their careers -- with one partner having more options than the other. After Trojanowski and Lee's postdoc together at Harvard University in the late 1970s, the two opted to focus on finding her a job first in biochemistry. "Because I was still in [clinical] training and more flexible," Trojanowski says, "we went to wherever she could get a job."

One or both partners often wind up altering their career plans for the team. Welch started out in astrophysics but knew that jobs in accelerator physics would be easier to find alongside Drell's high-energy-physics career. "I had to find a career path compatible with hers," Welch says. "I chose mine so we could find jobs for both of us at one institution, where the job prospects were pretty good."

Telling Prospective Employers

After several years in a field, most scientific marriages become public knowledge. But for new Ph.D.'s early in their careers, when to spill the beans about their academic partners can become tricky.

When Drell and Welch applied for their postdocs after earning their Ph.D.'s from Berkeley in 1983, they didn't tell employers that they were married, hoping to find positions independently. But when Welch went to dinner with his prospective co-workers during an interview, he found himself listening to them talk about his wife, who had interviewed previously. "It was an awkward situation," he says. "Here Persis and I were trying to be so discreet, and I get stuck in this Miss Manners moment." He confessed his predicament as soon as possible.

These days, it's best to be upfront about the situation. Nugent and Bachant didn't include marital information in their application when applying for faculty positions in 2000, but mentioned their spouses when they got phone calls from universities. "We filled them in at the very first opportunity," Nugent says. "We just felt we'd play it straight. We didn't want to surprise them in the end and say, 'Oh, guess what?'"

Now, as a faculty member on the hiring side of the table at Riverside, Nugent says that if prospective faculty members wait too long to tell the search committee about their better halves, the committee might not have the time to find career options for the spouse. Not only could that jeopardize the job-candidate's position, but "sometimes the CV of the spouse reveals he or she is a better fit," Nugent says. "And we'll say, 'Hey, we want this person!'"

Do Two Really Become One?

One prickly issue in two researchers' finding jobs together is the perception that they are a unit. Thirty years ago, a policy at the University of California prevented Karen De Valois from getting a faculty job in the same department as her husband, Russell. Because they were both studying vision science, she could work in his lab as a postdoc. Eventually she acquired her own grants and publications that enabled her to land her own professorship, as space opened up and rules relaxed. Karen De Valois doesn't blame universities for benefiting from such situations. "Why pay for what's free?" she asks.

The tactic isn't dead, either. Nugent says that the search committee at Riverside had one tenure-track opening for her and her husband. Before creating a second position, the two were asked if they would either share a lab or if one would consider a non-tenure track position. After a resounding "No," the university found a second tenure-track slot. Nugent understands why the department at first resisted offering two such jobs -- getting approval for new tenure-line positions at a public institution is a bear. "It was the easiest thing for them to do," she says.

Scientists who work on research projects with their spouse or partner need to make sure that each person's contributions are defined clearly. Trojanowski says that's been a concern for him and his wife. "We struggled with equality and recognition," he says. "We had been warned not to work together -- that it would be the death of her career. That wasn't a surprise to us -- we thought we could be smart about it." So they didn't work together at first, allowing their independent reputations to solidify. "We deliberately made sure recognition came to both," he says.

Nugent says that's the advice she and her husband got as well: "We were told by everyone everywhere to go to extra lengths to appear independent." Although they both study chromosomes, she focuses on the ends and he the middle. "We plan on collaborating in the future, but not now. It just won't look good," she says.

Karen De Valois says she tried very hard to be her own scientist while working in her husband's lab. "I did my own work, got my own papers," she says. "We were very careful about not having both names on the papers. It's not a problem [for me] anymore -- we're far enough along in our careers. But young couples have to be aware of these things. Be very careful to make sure your work is seen as separate. If it isn't, one or the other will be shortchanged."

Trojanowski says that intellectual and professional equality is key to working together happily. The junior partner's career can suffer in a relationship with a scientist of senior standing, he says, even when the senior person gives the proper credit. "If you've been around 10 years longer, it's hard to convince people that the junior person is really at your level."

Happy Endings

Succeeding as a scientific couple requires flexibility and an element of luck, says Drell, the physicist who is research director at the Stanford accelerator. "People will tell you that it's a stupid thing do," she says. "I suppose it's still a stupid thing. But by being flexible, it's easier to find solutions." Her husband, Welch, admits that sacrifices must be made. "Career-wise, I would've been better off if we weren't married. But I wouldn't have liked it very much," he says.

While combining relationships with science might make careers more difficult, it appears to make some researchers' lives easier. "I can only recommend it," says Trojanowski. "But it's not for everyone. Or so people tell me."