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五十年前,科学家的数量只有现在的十分之一。今天,仅美国就大约有25万物理学家和生物学家在从事研究工作。至于全世界,恐怕已上百万,而且尚以每年百分之几的比例继续增加。科学的繁荣有赖于国家对科学研究的庞大投资。现在基础研究的开支,美国每年为100亿美元(约1万5千亿日元),全世界的开支大概三倍于此数。但两代人以前,这方面的开支不是以亿(美元)计,而是以千(美元)计。科学研究规模的扩大引起了科学家的研究生活的质的变化。这种变化特别明显的是在政府投资最初猛增的物理学方面,但同时也涉及到其它领域,例如生物学等。这样,科学研究的日常生活就变得完全不同于第二次世界大战前了(第二次世界大战是科学促进的新旧时代的分界线)。变化在不断发生,未来科学家的研究生活又将会变得同现在不同。
Fifty years ago, the number of scientists was only one-tenth that of today. Today, there are about 250,000 physicists and biologists in the United States alone doing research. As for the whole world, I am afraid that it will probably amount to one million and will continue to increase at the rate of a few percent each year. The prosperity of science depends on the country's huge investment in scientific research. Now that basic research costs about 10 billion U.S. dollars (about 150 billion yen) in the U.S. each year, expenses around the world are about three times that. But two generations ago, the expenditure in this area was not in billions (dollars) but in thousands (dollars). The expansion of the scale of scientific research has caused a qualitative change in the research life of scientists. This change is particularly noticeable in the first real increase in government investment in physics, but also in other areas such as biology. In this way, the daily life of scientific research becomes completely different from before World War II (World War II is the dividing line between the old and the new era of science promotion). Changes are constantly occurring and future scientists' research lives will again be different from what they are now.