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I hesitate to ask this question, but I read a lot of the career advice from MathOverflow and math.stackexchange, and I couldn't find anything similar.

Four years after the PhD, I am pretty sure that I am going to leave academia soon. I do enjoy teaching and research, but the alpha-maleness, massive egos and pressure to publish are really unappealing to me, and I have never felt that I had the mathematical power to prove interesting results. However, I am really having trouble thinking of anything else to do. Most people seem to think that the main careers open to mathematicians are in banking and finance. I really want to work in some field where I can use mathematics, but it is also important to me to feel like I am contributing something positive or at least not actively doing harm. For this reason, financial speculation is very unappealing to me, although I do find the underlying mathematics quite fascinating.

Here is my question: what careers which make a positive contribution to society might be open to academic mathematicians who want to change careers?

  • 20
    Whether or not you use your "powers for good" is entirely up to you. There's nothing saying you have to be bad if you are a banker. Similarly, there's far more things you can do than banking and finance. Engineering is a very useful direction to go in, for example.2011-10-12
  • 93
    If you are good at programming, how about working at a company that designs mathematical software?2011-10-12
  • 14
    Flounder, what country are you in?2011-10-12
  • 10
    You can get a job with lots of free time, and use your powers to do good in your free time as you see fit. (The Pierre de Fermat model, say.) :P (This is not a serious suggestion.)2011-10-12
  • 7
    You could give advice to people in debt or tutor students from bad high schools. But I guess that you forgot to mention what your minimum requirements are for salary and lack of boredom.2011-10-12
  • 14
    The real question is whether you're going to use your powers for good or for awesome.2011-10-12
  • 104
    "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Batman *The Dark Knight*2011-10-12
  • 90
    @PeterSheldrick: That wasn't Batman; that was Harvey Dent!2011-10-12
  • 5
    Just in case... have you seen [this](https://www.maa.org/EbusPPRO/Bookstore/ProductDetail/tabid/170/Default.aspx?ProductId=1418)? You might be able to pick up some inspiration...2011-10-12
  • 10
    @Philip Brooker: New Zealand (so eg. NSA is ruled out) but I didn't want to put "not America" in the question statement because I thought that might discourage Americans from answering.2011-10-12
  • 5
    Does New Zealand have an equivalent to the NSA? I know several mathematicians from Australia who went to work for the Australian agency Defence Signals Directorate, and I think another destination for mathematicians in Australia is the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. If New Zealand has similar bodies (though as far as I know, New Zealand isn't known for huge expenditure on defence!), they might be an option. Go the Wallabies!2011-10-13
  • 35
    All joking aside, this might just be the stage where you realize that getting a PhD in mathematics wasn't exactly a good *career* decision, yes?2011-10-13
  • 13
    @ Philip Brooker: thanks for the info. I will check it out. @orokusaki: yes, of course, but I originally did the PhD because I wanted to be a mathematician and it was essential for that.2011-10-13
  • 7
    @Flounderer - You might take a look at how you can get involved in wind electrical generation, Nuclear electrical generation, or Hydrogen-based technologies (in particular, those which revolve around the conversion of water into Hydrogen / Oxygen with less energy). A combination of these will power our future, and there's plenty of room for mathematicians. The alternative to this otherwise inevitable future is to get into the opposite, "That ain't happenin on my watch" camp, and work for Northrop, Pratt & Whitney, or Ratheon.2011-10-13
  • 8
    You should really turn to the dark side. More seriously, any opportunity into the graphical computing market or other field of computation ? I hate to say it, but you can't always just do maths, you have to specialized to something which use math, if not it's just making math useless (well at least for how we use it for science right now).2011-10-13
  • 21
    When I was at uni, I remember that a well-known ecological organization was looking for a mathematician to join them on their arctic expeditions to do signal processing on whale songs. Just saying.2011-10-14
  • 7
    Since I don't have enough rep on this site to answer (just joined), I will just comment that I jumped ship from Pure Math many years ago to do a Statistics PhD. I don't suppose this is an option for everyone, but it is possible to do mathematical work in statistics, and my impression (not backed by solid data) is that a career doing that sort of thing is more feasible than pure math itself. Others below have suggested biostatistics/bioinformatics. While areas with the string `bio` in their names are popular, they are by means the only viable statistical areas around.2011-10-31
  • 7
    (contd) Statistics is a big area, and generally people with a mathematical clue are scarce. Most pure mathematicians in my experience think areas like statistics are below them. (PS. If someone feels like promoting these comments to an answer, I'd be grateful.)2011-10-31
  • 10
    The world doesn't need saving. Do what you *enjoy*2012-12-11
  • 39
    By the way, what makes you think outside of academie there's less of 'alpha-maleness, massive egos and pressure'?2013-01-13
  • 2
    Are you certain there are any such careers, assuming that you still want a career which uses maths?2013-09-24
  • 5
    Being in financial system for about a year, I would argue that `speculations' with finance is, in fact, a nature of money. And thus, it is not speculators who are bad.2013-10-15
  • 7
    I can't believe no one mentioned ["Why *shouldn't* I work for the NSA?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOZllbNarw)... @JoséNunoFerreira2014-05-09
  • 2
    This question is about careers advice, which is out of scope in MSE.2015-10-05
  • 1
    Finally closed. This was up way too long.2015-11-07

29 Answers 29