Scientist: "Beruf" or "Berufung"?

Today being a #3Mer #scientist in #STEM seems logical based on my passion to explore new things and to collaborate with my peers to create solutions to challenging problems. But looking back, the path to become a scientist had twists and turns and luck was involved many times, like when I passed an important chemistry exam by 0.5 points in my first year at the Technische Universit?t Darmstadt .

In the German language there are two closely related words: “Beruf“ and “Berufung“. But what have these two words to do with being a scientist? One answer to this question goes back to a talk given by Max Weber in 1917 with the title ?Wissenschaft als Beruf“ (Translation: Science as a Vocation). When reading the transcript of the talk for the first time it resonated very well with me. Max Weber in one passage elaborates on the two meanings of ?Beruf“, which translates well as profession, and ?Berufung“, which probably is best translated with vocation. So, is being a scientist a profession or a vocation?

The seed to become a scientist in my case was planted by science related books and TV shows in my youth. To understand what being a scientist really means, I was lucky that my father was able to organize an internship at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research when I was sixteen years old. I recently found the accelerator in a museum in Bonn, where I made the title photo. The GSI is responsible for investigating many of the heavy elements in the periodic table. As a result element 110 was named Darmstadtium. The element "Ds" may only have a half-time of 12.7 seconds, but walking across the center, helping to build detectors for electron/positron annihilation experiments, and working with real scientists changed my life towards becoming a scientist. There were still many hurdles to overcome, but in hindsight it seemed like it was inevitable.

Does it need vocation to become a scientist? Max Weber explains that one goal of our profession is to be overcome and proven wrong. Also, over the years the scientific curiosity is more difficult to satisfy. At the beginning it is like a small glass of water that you can easily fill to the top. On your way to new understandings of the world this glass becomes bigger, and the same amount of water is not enough to even fill it halfway. Especially when you have the desire to explore new things you need a deep inner motivation to continue, because very often you just feel miserable. If you want to know what this feels like, I can recommend a talk by Uri Alon: “why truly innovative science is a leap into the unknown”.?

Over the years I have met and collaborated with many great scientists. Although the various scientific disciplines view the world through different lenses and speak different languages, we still all share the same passion to leap into the unknown. As a Material Scientist I connect the microstructure of a material with its properties and by altering it I hope to improve the material properties. As an engineer my passion is to solve challenges through material alterations. Recently my attention has shifted to an even more fundamental question: What are the right challenges to be solved to help fight climate change, like finding the “no-regrets-moves” in the #Hydrogen Economy?

So, is being a scientist “Beruf” or “Berufung”? For me at least it is clearly both and this is probably not just unique for being a scientist, but for many other professions, too. Whatever the answer, I am thankful that by being a scientist I can spend my work life doing something I feel really passionate about.