Mathematicians don't quit, they fade away

Question

Edit: This question is now closed for being not related to math, but many people pointed out that becoming an actuary is one of the most viable career path for someone with skills in pure math.

Noone I've ever talked to knows what mathematicians do when they drop out of grad school or fail a postdoc or don't get tenure. That's because professors are exactly the people that didn't experience those things, and don't seem to keep in contact with those that do.

I went to an AMS research session for recent grads over the summer, and they admitted that they don't know either, and that they are planning to do a study or two to find out.

My question is this: for those who planned on a career in pure math and then stopped at some point by choice or otherwise, what do you do now?

I'd also be interested in anecdotes about friends and other students you know or knew, and also other related stories.

As for my stories, I have a friend with a PhD in pure math who teaches at a cool private high school, but everyone else I know is at a teaching college or a postdoc or still in school.

Answer 1

From the Book Mathematical Apocrypha , there were two extreme cases: One mathematician turned to a convicted axe murderer and kept doing math for rest of his life (from Prison) and another finished his Phd and became a Plumber (Plumbing was their family business, he was doing math just for himself, all along it was his intention of going back to family business).

There are no requisites for someone finishing something to continue or not to continue with it, depending on them being creatures of habit or not.

According to the same book Madonna was also a math undergrad for sometime

Answer 2

I completed 2 years of a Mathematics Ph.D. program, and after several discussions with my advisor, decided that a tenure-track path devoted to research was probably not a good one for me. My work ethic was average and I had a huge hill to climb with a limited background in Math studies that was based largely in the U.S.

I decided to leave the program before starting the dissertation work and entered into the business world working for a small, local insurance company with the goal of becoming an actuary. My advisor told me that if I didn't like the business world and wanted to come back to try Pure Mathematics again, they would welcome me back.

Nearly ten years later, I've completed all exams to become a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and now happily lead a team of ten people as a Second Vice President at a large U.S. Insurer. Sometimes late at night I wonder what might have been, and secretly long to solve original, advanced problems, but overall I am very happy and glad to have found this alternative career path.

Answer 3

Since I have hired quite a few Math Majors in my days, I know that some substantial chunk moves to what is effectively "Applied Math", i.e. computer software development. Many software specific algorithms are mathematical in nature, and it helps to have a decent foundation of Math to stand on before tackling those. But with that comes the downside, which is that these people are not particularly good in abstract or intermediary constructs to create well designed software. More often than not, it is all about formulas, with functions and arguments with as short names as is possible. So, such person can't be let loose to write entire systems, at least not early on...

Answer 4

Quite a number of them end up in industry as computer programmers - in our team of about 12 programmers for instance, three of them are mathematicians. I think this is a pretty normal ratio.