Economic Power, Population, and the Size of Astronomical Community
aa r X i v : . [ c s . D L ] A ug Journal of the Korean Astronomical Society https://doi.org/10.5303/JKAS.2019.00.0.1 : 1 ∼
18, 2019 August pISSN: 1225-4614 · eISSN: 2288-890X Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0 http://jkas.kas.org E CONOMIC P OWER , P
OPULATION , AND THE S IZE OF A STRONOMICAL C OMMUNITY
Sang-Hyeon Ahn Center for Theoretical Astronomy, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Daedeokdaero 776, Yuseong-gu,Daejeon 34055, Republic of Korea; [email protected]
Received April 30, 2019; accepted July 23, 2019
Abstract:
The number of astronomers for a country registered to the International Astronomical Union(IAU) is known to have a correlation with the gross domestic product (GDP). However, the robustness ofthis relationship can be doubted, because the fraction of astronomers joining the IAU differs from countryto country. Here we revisit this correlation by using the recent data updated as of 2017, and then wefind a similar correlation by using the total enumeration of astronomers and astrophysicists with PhDdegrees and working in each country, instead of adopting the number of IAU members. We confirm theexistence of the correlation. We also confirm the existence of two subgroup in the correlation. One groupconsists of European advanced countries having long history of modern astronomy, while the other groupconsists of countries having experienced recent rapid economic development. In order to find causationin the correlation, we obtain the long-term variations of the number of astronomers, population, and theGDP for a number of countries to find that the number of astronomers per citizen for recently developingcountries has increased more rapidly as GDP per capita increased, than that for fully developed countries.We collect a demographic data of the Korean astronomical community to find that it has experienceda recent rapid growth. From these findings we estimate the proper size of the Korean astronomicalcommunity by considering the societys economic power and population. The current number of PhDastronomers working in Korea is approximately 310, but it should be 550 that is large enough to becomparable and competitive to the sizes of Spainish, Canadian, and Japanese astronomical communities,which will be able to be reached by the year of 2030 if the current increasing trend continues. The propernumber of PhD astronomers in Korea should be 780 in order to be comparable to the German, French, andItalian communities. We discuss on the way how to overcome the vulnerability of the Korean astronomicalcommunity, based on the statistics of national R&D expenditure structure comparing with that of othermajor advanced countries.
Key words:
General: sociology of astronomy, methods: data analysis, statistical
1. I
NTRODUCTION
Scientific curiosity of human beings has long been laidon wonders of the Universe, which have stimulated theintelligent to develop modern astronomy as being oneof the fascinating subjects. Being a pure science, thesize of astronomical community of a country can be ameasure of scientific development of the country. It hasbeen one of highly interesting topics to governments,as well as scientific communities, to know a nation’sposition among the international science communities.Thus, analyzing the astronomical communities can giveus some lesson on this issue.There are a large number of previous researcheson the relation between economic capability and scien-tific research output, in either quantitative or qualita-tive aspects. For example, May (1997) analyzed the sci-entific research outputs among several countries, basedon the Science Citation Index established by the In-stitute for Scientific Information. He found the exis-tence of the large differences in performance among na-tions, which was ascribed to differences in the nature of
Corresponding author:
Sang-Hyeon Ahn the institutional settings between Germany/France andthe UK/USA/Scandinavian countries. He stressed thatthe latter performed better because of their heritage ofnonhierarchical nature and continuous stimulations in-jected by young generation. Similar approaches on thistopic were also made by King (2004), Moed (2005), andHohmannm Glatt, & Tetsworth (2017), who performedbibliometric analyses for publication/citation rates.The NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) Ab-stract Service was first demonstrated in 1992 and wasput on-line service for general use in 1993. This systemis widely used in the international astronomical com-munities, and so provides the best data for the bib-liometric researches. Kurtz et al. (2005) analyzed theNASA ADS query data in detail. They found a fewthings. First of all, when we consider the intensitiesrather than total volumes, the largest per capita userof the ADS is not the USA or the largest community,but the France and the Netherlands. Second of all, theyfound that while the difference in per capita income be-tween the richest and poorest countries is a factor of tento fifteen, the difference in per capita ADS use reaches1
S. -H. Ahn roughly a factor of three hundred. Last of all, easternEuropean countries perform efficiently astronomical re-sarches by using ADS system, which means that GDPis not a proper measure of the wealth of nations whenthey are undergoing substantial economic and politi-cal changes. Henneken & Kurtz (2019) introduced thereading activity or query frequency to the ADS in at-tempts to quantify the research efficiency, as well as thetraditional bibliometric indicators, like publication andcitation.We agree on an idea that the astronomy can beregarded as a proxy for all basic sciences beacausethere is no applied astronomy, as was pointed out byKurtz et al. (2005). To prove this idea is beyond thescope of this paper. However, admitting the assump-tion, we will only focus on the astronomical communityonly rather than consider all the entire scientific com-munities. Additionally, we will not consider the biblio-metric data, which usually indicates the output or per-formance of research activities. Instead, in this paper,we will just concentrate on the traditional indicatorssuch as the number of astronomers and the GDP, in ei-ther volumes or intensities. Nevertheless, we note thatthis work is meaningful, because we will use the mostrecent data and also the time series data that can traceback to 30 years ago.
2. D
ATA
One indicator for the characteristics of astronomicalcommunities is the number of astronomers registered tothe International Astronomical Union (hereafter IAUin abbreviation). It is known that the number has acorrelation with the gross domestic product (hereafterabbreviated as GDP), which is often regarded as anindicator of economic power (Hearnshaw 2001, 2006;Ribeiro et al. 2013). However, we can easily agree onan idea that the percentage of astronomers joining theIAU varies from country to country. Thus, we needto consider the full volume of the astronomers in thispaper.We adopt the GDP per capita, the GDP purchas-ing power parity (PPP in abbreviation) in current USD,and populations as of the year 2017 provided in theWorld Bank database . The number of IAU membersfor each country is obtained from the statistics providedon the IAU website . Table 1 shows the number of IAUmembers, the GDP per capita, and population for eachcountry.
3. R
ESULTS
At first, we plot the number of IAU members versusthe GDP per capita in Figure 1 to see that there exist The World Bank national account data,and OECD National Accounts data files: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.cd International Astronomical Union. Geographicaland Gender Distribution of Individual Members, . a number of groups: BRICS countries , rich but lesspopulous countries, developing countries, and rich andpopulous countries. It is noteworthy that the Republicof Korea, denoted by kor, positioned at a crossroad inbetween the groups.In order to see the correlation between economicpower and size of astronomical community by countryas a whole, the GDP and the number of IAU membersare plotted in Figure 2. Here, the color of each pointagrees with those in Figure 1. We confirm that thenumber of IAU astronomers in developed countries hasa correlation with their GDP. Interestingly, the corre-lation in Figure 2 is branched into two groups, whichare represented by the two dashed fitting lines. We findthat Kurtz et al. (2005) performed the similar analy-sis for the data as of the year 2000 to find the twobranches, which are separated by a factor of three inthe GDP axis. We reach the same results, but our re-sults are obtained by using the approximatedly-twenty-year-later data. Note that the axes of our Figure 2 isinverted comparing with their Figure 5. We make roughleast square fits for the two branched data, and obtainthe fitting line y = 0 . x − .
59 for the upper line and y = 0 . x − .
78 for the lower. Here x ≡ log GDP and y ≡ log N ast , where N ast is the number of as-tronomers. These correspond to a separation of twobranches by a factor of 2.2 to 2.6 times in the GDPaxis. We think that this factor is in rough agreementwith the factor of three given by Kurtz et al. (2005).However, it is not certain if there is any sophisticatedchange in the trends of the two branches during the lasttwenty years.Kurtz et al. (2005) also found that 31 Europeancountries locate on the upper branch while only threeon the lower branch, and that seventeen Asian coun-tries locate on the lower branch. However, they did nottake into account the South American countries suchas Mexico and Brazil, which can be seen in Figure 2of this paper and in their Figure 5. Kurtz et al. (2005)ascribed the polarization to the cultural difference be-tween western nations and eastern nations, in terms ofsupports for basic science. Partially we agree on thatopinion. However, we think that it would be ratherproper to ascribe the the polarization to the differenceof economic development stages of those countries.The GDP per capita represents the average eco-nomic living standards of an individual citizen, andthe number of IAU members per citizen indicates howmuch an individual citizen enjoys astronomy or is in-fluenced by astronomical knowledge. We plot the GDPper capita and the number of IAU members per citi-zen in Figure 3. We can see that developed countriesusually have approximately one astronomer per 100,000citizens, while the so-called BRICS countries, markedwith green dots, have approximately one astronomersper million citizens. We confirm that there is a roughcorrelation between GDP per capita and number of IAU BRICS is the acronym representing five major emergingeconomies: Brizil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. economic Power and the size of astronomical community Table 1
GDP per capita, populations, and the number of astronomers joining into IAU.
Exceptionally, the GDP percapita of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (or North Korea) is not provided by IMF or World Bank. Thus wechoose the figure of 1,360 USD estimated by Statistics Korea of the government of the Republic of Korea. The GDP percapita for Egypt is also not provided for the year 2017, and so we get the value in the year 2016.No. Country GDP/cap. Population IAU No. Country GDP/cap. Population IAUUSD million members USD million members1 USA 59,495 326.6 2,824 31 China 8,583 1,379.3 6632 Japan 38,550 126.5 728 32 Taiwan 24,227 23.5 753 France 39,673 67.1 856 33 Argentina 14,061 44.3 1484 Germany 44,184 80.6 654 34 Australia 56,135 23.2 3285 India 1,852 1,281.9 281 35 Austria 46,436 8.8 646 Indonesia 3,859 260.6 17 36 Belgium 43,243 11.5 1457 Iran 5,252 82.0 40 37 Brazil 10,020 207.4 2048 Israel 39,974 8.3 97 38 Canada 44,773 35.6 3079 Italy 31,619 62.1 670 39 Chile 14,315 17.8 11510 Kazakhstan 8,585 18.6 10 40 Czech Rep. 19,818 10.7 12511 Korea, DPR 1,360 25.2 18 41 Denmark 56,335 5.6 9012 Korea Rep. 29,730 51.2 158 42 Egypt 3,685 97.0 6713 Mexico 9,249 124.6 147 43 Finland 45,693 5.5 8014 Mongolia 3,553 3.1 6 44 Norway 73,615 5.3 4115 Netherlands 48,272 17.1 228 45 Romania 10,372 21.5 3316 New Zealand 41,629 4.5 35 46 Serbia 5,600 7.1 5117 Poland 13,429 38.5 162 47 Slovak Rep. 17,491 5.4 4618 Portugal 20,575 10.8 69 48 Venezuela 6,850 31.3 2219 Russian Fed. 10,248 142.3 436 49 Uruguay 17,252 3.4 520 Greece 18,945 10.8 121 50 Algeria 4,225 41.0 221 Hungary 13,460 9.9 72 51 Armenia 3,690 3.0 2822 South Africa 6,089 54.8 122 52 Azerbaijan 4,098 10.0 1023 Spain 28,212 49.0 378 53 Bulgaria 7,924 7.1 6724 Sweden 53,248 10.0 145 54 Colombia 6,238 47.7 2725 Switzerland 80,837 8.2 138 55 Estonia 19,618 1.3 3326 Thailand 6,336 68.4 33 56 Ireland 68,604 5.0 5027 Turkey 10,434 80.8 80 57 Malaysia 9,660 31.4 1028 Ukraine 2,459 44.0 152 58 Nigeria 2,092 190.6 1029 UK 38,847 64.8 724 59 Philippines 3,022 104.3 530 Vietnam 2,306 96.2 13 60 Singapore 53,880 5.9 2
S. -H. Ahn
Figure 1.
GDP per capita versus number of IAU members.
The dotted lines are drawn to distinguish the BRICScountries denoted by green points in partition (a), the rich but relatively less populous countries denoted by magenta dots inpartition (b), the developed and populous countries in Europe denoted by red dots in partition (c), and developing countriesdenoted by black dots in partition (d). The three alphabet letters represent the country names. Exceptionally, nkr representsthe Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea or North Korea, while kor represents the Republic of Korea or South Korea. Chnrepresents the Peoples Republic of China, while chl represents Chile. Nzl stands for New Zealand. economic Power and the size of astronomical community Figure 2.
GDP and number of IAU members
It shows a correlation between the economic capability and the size ofastronomical community. The colours have the same meaning defined in Figure 1. Two branches of correlations exist. Thecountries belonging to the upper branch have relatively long history of modern astronomy and developed economy, whilethose belonging to the lower branch have relatively short history of modern astronomy and relatively less-developed economy.
S. -H. Ahn members per one citizen. As was also pointed out inprevious researches (Hearnshaw 2001, 2006), there area number of outliers. For example, Estonia is located farfrom the correlation in Figure 3, meaning that the coun-try has a relatively large number of astronomers com-pared to their GDP per capita. Another outliers such asKorea, Taiwan, Japan, Austria, and Norway have a rel-atively small number of astronomers compared to theirGDP per capita values. In Figure ?? we can roughly seethe existence of two branches in the correlation. How-ever, the constituent countries for the two branches donot coincide with those seen in Figure 2. As is mentioned above, the percentage of astronomersthat have joined the IAU varies from country to coun-try. Hence, in order to overcome this limitation, wehave to count the total numbers of doctoral astronomersworking in each country instead of just adopting theIAU members. We try to include astronomers, astro-physicists, and even physicists who study cosmology,high energy astrophysics, or astroparticle physics. How-ever, engineers and technicians engaged in the devel-opment of instruments are not included in this paper,despite of their important contribution to astronomicalresearches.Some countries like the United States (Pold & Ivie 1997), the United Kingdom (Massey2017; McWhinnie 2017; Murdin 2012), Germany ,Spain (Barcons 2007; Gorgas 2016), and Canada provided useful results of demographic surveys in We also collect data from Astronomy and Astro-physics Survey Committee,
Status of Profession, inWorking Papers: Astronomy and Astrophysics PanelReports , 321-325 (National Academy Press, 1991) ; NationalResearch Council, in Federal Funding of AstronomicalResearch - chapter 4: Demographics.
Careers/Careers in Astronomy/Employment Potential , http://aas.org/learn/careers-astronomy/ Redaktionskomitee,
Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftStatus und Perspektiven der Astronomie in Deutsch-land 2003-2016 Denkschrift (ed. Burkert, A., Genzel,R., Hasinger, G., Morfill, G., Schneider, P. Koester, D.)229-230 (WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2003), ;Redaktionskomitee des Rats deutscher Sternwarten,
Denkschrift 2017, perspektiven der Astrophsik in Deutsch-land 2017-2030: Von den Anfaengen des Kosmosbis zu Lebensspuren auf extrasolaren Planeten (eds.Steinmetz, M., Brueggen, M., Burkert, A., Schin-nerer, E., Stutzki, J., Tacconi, L. Wambsganss, J. &Wilms, J.) 25-31 (Astronomische Gesellschaft, 2017), . Canadian Astronomical Society,
Unveiling the Cos-mos: a Vision for Canadian Astronomy-Report ofthe Long Range Plan 2010 Panel , p.13, p.83 (2011), ;Canadian Astronomical Society, 2015,
Unveiling theCosmos: Canadian Astronomy 2016-2020, Reportof the mid-Term Review 2015 Panel. pp.104-106, http://casca.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/MTR2016nocover.pdf ;Racine, R. “The evolution of astronomical and astrophysicalpopulations in Canadian Universities”, a paper published onthe following internet site, in which he provided statistical dataof the results of the five astronomical and astrophysical cen- either their long-term plans or annual reports, whichcan be used for estimating the numbers.We obtained the statistics for Gemany fromDenkschrift 2003 and 2017 mentioned above, especiallyTable 2.2 of Denschrift 2017, published by the Ger-man astronomical society, but German academic rank-ing system is a bit special and so its equivalence isconfirmed by a private communication (Steimetz 2018).Japanese astronomical community provided the resultsof demographic surveys in the long-term plan (Sawa2000), and we also take into account the member statis-tics in the Bulletins of the Japanese Astronomical So-ciety . The number of astronomical scientists workingin France as of 2003 was given by Mamon (2003), andthe numbers as of 2018 are estimated by a private com-munication with him (Mamon 2018).The number of professors working in Korean uni-versities is given in the long-term plan made by theKorean Astronomical Society (Lee et al. 2017). Thenumber of astronomers in the institute, the Korea As-tronomy and Space Science Institute, is obtained fromthe internal data , the similar data for the universitiesis obtained by inspecting the Bulletins of the KoreanAstronomical Society .The astronomical community of the Nether-lands is composed of mainly four organizations(Boland & Habing 2013): NOVA , ASTRON ,SRON , and JIVE . We counted only doctoral sci-entists directly from their web sites. In particular, thenumber of scientists in ASTRON at the end of 2017was checked though a private communication , whichgives a consistent result with our estimation.The Italian astronomical community has similarstructure to the Korean one. The astronomers are work-ing in either Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAFin abbreviation) or 25 universities, and the number suses for the years of 1999, 2004, 2007-08, 2009-10, and 2013-14. Astronomy and Space Physics subcommittee of Physicscommittee in Science Council of Japan,
Prospects and Long-term Planning of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
14 (2010), Astronomical Society of Japan,
Annual Re-ports (Astronomical Society of Japan, 2016), Human Resources Team of Korea Astronomy and Space ScienceInstitute, 2018, a private communication The relevant annual reports have been published on the Bul-lentins of the Korean Astronomical Society 1990-2018. For ex-ample, see Korean Astronomical Society (2018). In abbreviation of Nederlandse Onder-zoekschool Voor Astronomie, NOVA web site: http://nova-astronomy.nl/people/ In abbreviation of the Netherlands Insti-tute for Radio Astronomy, ASTRON web site: Member list of each group in the SRON web site: Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE) web site: Steenbergen, A. 2018, A private communication. “At the endof 2017, ASTRON employed 20 scientists (excluding R&D en-gineers) on a permanent basis, and 28 scientists on fixed-termcontracts. At the end of 2016, these figures were 14 and 31,respectively.” economic Power and the size of astronomical community Figure 3.
GDP per capita and the number of IAU members per citizen.
The colours and the country names arethe same to Figure 1. We can see the rough existence of two-branched correlations for the countries with relatively largeGDP per capita.
S. -H. Ahn of PhD scientists in the year of 2012 was reported ina paper (Sciortino 2013). It is reasonable to assumethat the number of astronomers in universities has notbeen changed much. We can find a detailed demo-graphic information in the Astro-Dip database web-site , from which we can count the numbers of doctoralastronomers and astrophysicists working in the INAF.Similarly, the Taiwanese astronomical communityprovides a report of demographic investigation (Ip2017), we make a list of institutions and universities andcount the number of PhD scientists one by one fromtheir web sites. The number of doctoral astronomersin Australia was given in a paper written by Sadler(2017), and a relevant information can also be foundin a decadal survey report published by the AustralianAcademy of Science in 2015 . All these numbers arefaithfully cross-checked with the relevant literatures,but all procedures and more detailed descriptions aregiven in the Appendix section, and here we only showthe data in Table 2.In Table 2, we confirm our guess that the percent-age of IAU membership varies from country to country.With the data in Table 2, we draw Figure 4 and Fig-ure 5 in a similar manner to Figure 2 and Figure 3. Wecan see the correlations similar to those in Figure 2 andFigure 3. Interestingly, we can roughly confirm the exis-tence of two groups in the correlations. Those countriesincluding Australia, the USA, Japan, Canana, Korea,and Taiwan can be grouped as countries experienced re-cent rapid economic growth, while the others have longhistories and have experienced recent gradual growth ofthe economy.In the previous research with the IAU member-ship, it was pointed out that Republic of Korea, Taiwan,Japan, Austria and Norway have a relatively small num-ber of astronomers compared to their economic power(Hearnshaw 2006). This fact cannot be ascribed to thelow fraction of astronomers who had joined the IAU, be-cause the fractions for those countries are not so muchdifferent from the other countries. We would rather payattention to a fact that those countries such as Repub-lic of Korea, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the USAhave experienced relatively recent and rapid economicdevelopment in spite of their short history of modernastronomy, while the European countries having a rel-atively long history.We also investigate temporal variation of the num-ber of astronomers for several countries. We see, in theupper panel of Figure 4, a general trend that the num-ber of astronomers has increased with the same rate oftheir GDP growths, which is conspicuous for countriessuch as the UK, Germany, France, Spain, the Nether-lands, and the USA. What is more interesting is thatthe number of astronomers per citizen for the advanced Astro-Dip Anagrafica dipendent, Database H1-HRMS Australian Academy of Science, 2015, “Australia inthe Era of Global Astronomy: the Decadal Plan forAustralian Astronomy 20162025”, Australian Academy ofScience. http://bit.ly/1P4Mfc5 countries, such as Australia, the USA, and the UK, hasbeen nearly constant for the last 30 years, as can beseen in the lower panel of Figure 4. Their GDP valuesand populations have surely been increased for that pe-riod. Hence, the total number of astronomers has alsobeen increased as much. On the other hand, France,Spain, Italy, and Germany show the relatively rapidgrowth of astronomers in the recent times. In particu-lar, Germany shows quite large increase in the numberof astronomers per citizen, which might be caused bythe governmentally-driven development of science afterthe German unification.Until now we have adopted the GDP per capitain US dollars, which is just a nominal value. In orderto compare the living standards one another in a morerealistic manner, we adopt the gross domestic productbased on purchasing power parity or GDP(PPP) in ab-breviation. In Figure 5 we show the results obtainedby adopting the GDP(PPP). Korea and Taiwan haverelatively low living costs and so the GDP(PPP) val-ues are larger than the nominal GDP values. Sincethe GDP(PPP) per capita values for the countries arelarger, their living standards are nearly at the similarlevel to those of advanced countries. However, the num-bers of astronomers, having PhD degrees and workingin those countries, are relatively smaller than those ofadvanced countries. This means that those countriesneed more investment on astronomy.Based on the current number of astronomers percitizen of other advanced countries, we can estimatethe proper number of astronomers working in Korea.In order for the Korean astronomical community tohave comparable and competitive size to those of Spain,Canada, and Japan, the total number of astronomersworking in Korea should be 550 as of 2018. If approx-imately 800 PhDs were working in Korea as of 2018,the Korean astronomical community could be compa-rable to those of Germany, France, and Italy. In orderfor the Korean astronomical community to be compa-rable to those of the USA, the UK, the Netherlands,and Australia, the total number of astronomers withPhD degrees and working in Korea should be approx-imately 1,000. However, since the current number ofastronomers, with PhD degrees and working in Ko-rea, is at most 310, the Korean astronomical commu-nity should be able to create a large number of addi-tional jobs in the near future as soon as possible in or-der to carry out fundamental and cutting-edge researchprojects and lead creative and meaningful discoveries.
We get to know that the current size of the Korean as-tronomical community is by far smaller than those ofadvanced countries. Then, we need to check the historyof the Korean astronomical community and the currentstatus to define a problem and to look for solutions byestimating the adequate number of astronomers work-ing in the country.We collect the demographic data mainly from theprevious issues of the Bulletin of Korean Astronomi- economic Power and the size of astronomical community Table 2
Total numbers of astronomers and astrophysicists, populations, GDP per capita, and GDP(PPP) percapita.
The populations and the GDP per capita are the same to Table 1, while the number of astronomers andastrophysicist are counted or estimated for the entire astronomical community.Country Astronomers Populations GDP/capita GDP/capita PhDs/million IAU members Ratio(A) (B) USD (PPP) USD (A)/(B) (C) (C)/(A)USA 7,000 326.6 59,532 59,532 21 2,824 40%Germany 1,400 80.6 44,470 50,639 18 654 47%Japan 1,500 126.5 43,279 43,279 12 728 49%UK 1,400 64.8 40,412 42,656 26 724 52%France 950 67.1 38,477 42,850 33 856 90%Italy 1,000 62.1 31,953 39,427 16 670 67%Spain 555 49 26,617 36,305 10 378 68%Rep. of Korea 310 51.2 29,743 38,335 6 158 51%Taiwan 130 23.5 24,318 49,827 6 75 58%Netherlands 390 17.1 45,638 52,503 23 228 58%Canada 400 35.6 45,032 46,705 11 305 76%Australia 530 23.2 62,328 46,743 23 328 62%
Table 3
Temporal increase of astronmers and astrophysicists working in Republic of Korea.
Data are gathered fromBulletins of the Korean Astronomical Society. Permanent positions and temporal positions are shown, and PDF meanspostdoctoral fellow.year Universities Institutes (mostly KASI) Sumperm. temp. perm. contract PDF perm. temp. total1990 24 7 8 0 0 32 7 391992 25 0 10 0 0 35 0 351994 42 3 16 0 0 58 3 611996 43 4 20 1 0 63 5 681999 50 14 25 4 0 75 18 932000 46 20 27 5 0 73 25 982001 51 21 33 7 1 84 29 1132002 49 17 38 6 0 87 23 1102003 59 23 44 17 4 103 44 1472004 59 39 52 13 2 111 54 1652005 60 33 59 9 7 119 49 1682006 64 28 64 10 5 128 43 1712007 65 20 77 9 14 142 43 1852008 67 30 78 7 11 145 48 1932009 70 22 81 17 19 151 58 2092010 78 19 85 29 22 163 70 2332011 77 29 91 39 26 168 94 2622012 79 37 97 35 14 176 86 2622013 77 46 105 56 20 182 122 3042014 75 57 117 55 14 192 126 3182015 77 51 127 56 8 204 115 3192016 77 44 129 56 10 206 110 3162017 82 42 138 38 6 220 86 3062018 86 50 147 20 7 233 77 310 S. -H. Ahn
Figure 4.
GDP and the number of PhD astronomers.
The upper panel shows that the total numbers of astronomerswith PhD degrees for a number of countries have a robust correlation with the GDP values. Note that the countries havingrelatively young history of modern astronomy show a correlation (lower black dashed line with a Pearson’s correlationcoefficient R = 0 .
98) that is a bit different from the correlation seen in the European countries having relatively longhistory of modern astronomy (upper black dashed line with a Pearson’s correlation coefficient R = 0 . R = 0 .
89. Stars linked by linesrepresent the temporal variations of the relevant quantitites, which follow the correlations. The lower panel shows a roughcorrelation between the GDP per capita and the number of astronomers per citizen. The existence of two groups is alsoapparent. We see that most of advanced countries show rather constant number of astronomers, while the numbers of theSpanish, French, and the German astronomers have increased as their GDP values increased. economic Power and the size of astronomical community Figure 5.
GDP(PPP)/capita and the number of PhD astronomers
The same to Figure 4, but we adopt the GDP basedon Purchasing Power Parity per capita denoted by GDP(PPP)/capita in order to compare differences in living standardsbetween nations. The GDP(PPP) and the number of astronomers show a rough correlation with a Pearson’s correlationcoefficient R = 0 .
75, but the data excluding Republic of Korea (or South Korea), Taiwan, and Canada shows tightercorrelation with a Pearson’s correlation coefficient R = 0 .
93. It is more apparent that the countries such as Republic ofKorea, Taiwan, Cananda, Japan have relatively less astronomers and astrophysicists than expected considering their livingstandards. S. -H. Ahn
Figure 6.
Temporal variation of the number of as-tronomers in Korea for the last 30 years.
It is note-worthy that the number of astronomers working in the re-search institute has increased faster than that of professorsin universities. The total permanent positions means thesum of the two categories. Adding the postdocs and con-tract positions to them makes the number of total PhD as-tronomers. If this trend continues, the number of PhD as-tronomers working in Korea will reach 550 that correspondsto the current size of astronomical communities for Spain,Canada, and Japan by the year of 2030. cal Society and complemented by the Bulletin of Ko-rean Space Sciences Society. Each member institutionhas reported their annual members and activities, andso we can trace the demographics back to early 1990s.We grouped the PhDs with permanent positions, eitherin Universities or in research institutes, and the otherswith non-permanent positions, either in contract posi-tions or postdocs.We show the data in Table 3, and the temporalvariations of number of PhDs in Figure 6. We can seea rapid increase in the number of PhD astronomers inKorea for the last 30 years, which can be fitted with afunction of N ( t ) = 2 . t − . + 35 . The perma-nents in the research institute, a government-supportednational institute called KASI has dominated the in-crease, and its workforce outnumbered professors in theUniversities after the year of 2006 and becomes threetimes larger as of 2018. We can see that the numberof PhDs working in Korea will be extrapolated to beapproximately 550 by the year of 2030 if the inreasingtrend will be continued. The number corresponds tothe current sizes of astronomical communites such asSpain, Canada, and Japan.
4. C
ONCLUSIONS
In summary, we have found that the astronomical com-munities of countries around the world can be groupedinto a few categories in the domain of the GDP percapita and the number of astronomers per citizen: i.e. large, populous, but less developed countries (or BRICScountries); highly matured, populous, and highly ad-vanced countries; less populous but highly developedcountries; developing countries. The Korean astronom-ical community lies inbetween them, which means thatthe Korean community is now at the crossroad of sci-ence development.We have confirmed the correlation between the sizeof astronomical community and the economic power.Additionally, we confirm that the correlation for thecountries having long tradition of modern astronomyis a bit different from that for the countries emerginglater, which can be ascribed to a fact that some coun-tries have experienced a recent economic developmentso rapidly that their pure science sectors could not havebeen supported and developed in time.However, in general, a correlation may not implycausation. Hence, in order to check if any causationholds in this case, we assume that the larger economiccapacity a country or the people has, the more sup-portive to astronomy they would be: that is, the num-ber of astronomers working in the country must havebeen smaller in the past when the GDP of that coun-try was lower. We obtain the temporal variation of thenumber of astronomers and the GDP values for a num-ber of countries such as the United States of America,the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Spain, Italy,and France. From this statistics we have found that thenumber of astronomers is generally an increasing func-tion of GDP or time. We also found that the number ofastronomers for the countries having been experiencedrecent rapid economic growth, such as Germany, showrapid increases, while the countries having sufficientlydeveloped economy, such as the United States, show rel-atively slow increase or nearly constancy in the numberof astronomers per citizen. Thus, we conclude that thenumber of astronomers per citizen is a more importantmeasure than other indicators to measure and estimatean adequate size of astronomical community.Base on these observations, we have estimated aproper number of astronomers working in Korea con-sidering GDP and population. We conclude that theKorean astronomical community could be competitiveand comparable to those of Spain, Japan, and Canadaif it had approximately 550 astronomers with PhD; itcould be comparable to the German, French, and Ital-ian astronomical communities if it had approximately780 astronomers with PhD degrees; it could be compa-rable to the astronomical communities of the USA andthe UK, if it had approximately 1,000 astronomers withPhD degree.Subsequently, we have investigated the temporalvariation of the size of the Korean astronomical com-munity for the last 30 years. Although the commu-nity has experienced a rapid growth for the last threedecades, the number of astronomers working in Korea isby far smaller than those of astronomers working in ad-vanced countries when considering population and eco-nomic capability. The Korean astronomical communitywill be able to reach the capability of comminities such economic Power and the size of astronomical community statistics brief and the press re-lease by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and ICTin July 2018 (Lee & Kim 2018), the total amount of Ko-reas R&D investment reached 78.8 trillion won (69.73billion USD) in 2017, up more than 13.5% from thatin 2016. The South Korean R&D expenditure rankes Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning fifth among OECD member countries after the UnitedStates, China, Japan and Germany. What is more in-teresting is that South Koreas ratio of expenditure onR&D to the GDP was 4.55% in 2017, which is top higherthan the rank 2 or Israels 4.25%. A similar statistics asof 2015 can also be found in the Table 4-5 in the theScience and Engineering Indicators 2018 published byNSB (2018), which means there has been a continuoussupport for the Korean science and technology sectorby both the government and the private companies inrecent years.Then, what makes the pure-science sector rep-resented by astronomy so vulnerable in Korea? Wesee, in the survey presented by the Korean govern-ment mentioned above, that the R&D sources, eitherfrom the government or from the private companies, arenot much different from other countries like the USA,Japan, Germany, France, the UK, and China. In manyways, it seems that the Korean science policy has beenbenchmarking that of Japan, as well as the USA.We can doubt if the Korean astronomers spend lessmoney than astronomers in other advanced countries.However, this is not the case. The R&D expenditureper FTE (Full-time equivalent) in Korea is 182 thou-sand USD per year. (See Figure 3 in the page 4 ofLee & Kim (2018).) As of 2018, the Korean astronomi-cal community has approximately 240 astronomers withpermanent positions, as we have shown in Table 3 ofthis paper, and they spend roughly 45 million USD peryear. Hence, the R&D expenditure per FTE per year isapproximately 190 thousand USD per year. If we countall 310 PhDs, the R&D expenditure per FTE per yearis approximately 150 thousand USD per year, which isa bit smaller but nearly as large as to that of the UK.There are two major differences in the Korean grossdomestic R&D expenditure structures from those of theadvanced countries. First of all, the relative percent-age of pure/basic science sector has been decreasing,especially in recent 5 to 10 years. (See Figure 11 onthe page 8 of Lee & Kim (2018).) It is lower than thevalues of advanced countries such as France, the USA,and the UK. (See Figure 12 on the page 9 of Lee & Kim(2018).) Second of all, the expenditure for R&D person-nel is less than other advanced countries such as Ger-many and France, and larger than Japan and China.(See the Figure in the page 10 of Lee & Kim (2018).)Maybe this happens because the labor costs are differ-ent from country to country. In other words, the laborcost in Korea is cheaper than those in advanced coun-tries. This also means Korean government did not hireas many astronomers as they can hire with the sameamount of budget to the advanced countries. We haveshown that the number of astronomers per citizen inKorea is too small to carry out outstanding researches.The most urgent thing is to increase the number of sci-entists in astronomy sector to meet the size of advancedcountries. We needs vision to make the country strongin basic science.Perhaps one of the most persuasive justificationsfor the investments to astronomy lie in the important4
S. -H. Ahn role of astronomy that make the society adhering toinnovative and cutting-edge sectors of science and tech-nology by stimulating the deep desire of human beingsto understand the origin, existence, and fate of the cos-mos and human beings. We can find in history a largeamount of examples that societys support for merelycurious-driven scientific researches has led to contribu-tions to technology advances that has become long-termbenefits to society. It is even said that the national in-vestment to science is viewed as an essential elementof economic strength and competitiveness. These con-cerns and interests all make people maintain the appro-priately large number of astronomers in their countries,and in order to realize such consensus, a sufficient finan-cial capacity is needed. Thus, we can see the correla-tion between the GDP and the number of astronomers,which can be a guide-line for the emerging and devel-oping countries. A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author is grateful to Prof. Hyung Mok Lee foruseful discussions. He also thanks to the anonymousreferee for the constructive comments that make thepaper improved much. This research was supportedby Basic Science Research Program through the Na-tional Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded bythe Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning(NRF-2018R1D1A1B07050035). A PPENDIX
A. D
ETAILED DESCRIPTION ON C ENSUSBY C OUNTRY
USA
The 2016 demographic survey of the AmericanAstronomical Society (hereafter abbreviated as AAS)showed that the entire AAS members consisted of 61%full membership, 21% junior members, 9% associatemembers, 9% emeritus, and 1% educational affiliates(Pold & Ivie 1997). According to the same surveyfor the members whose addresses were registered inthe United States, the percentage of respondents withdoctoral degrees was approximately 80% (Pold & Ivie1997). As of the year 2018, the number of AAS mem-bers is about 7,000 . Therefore, it is estimated thatapproximately 5,600 members of the AAS have PhD de-grees. Moreover, there are about 1,000 astrophysicistswho have exclusively joined the astrophysics division ofthe American Physical Society (hereafter APS in abbre-viation), and there are also several hundred people whohave not joined both societies. Thus, we estimate thatthere are approximately 7,000 doctoral astronomers orastrophysicists in the United States as of May 2018.According to a survey by the National ResearchCouncil of the United States in 1998 , the AAS had6,700 members, as of 1998. When extrapolating the American Astronomical Society website: Ca-reers/ Careers in Astronomy/Employment Potential, http://aas.org/learn/careers-astronomy/ Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics, Board onPhysics and Astronomy, Space Studies Board, National Re-search Council, 2000,
Federal Funding of Astronomical Re-search , pp.16-20, Washington D.C.:National Academy Press. http://nap.edu/9954 fractional ratio of doctoral members, 80%, in the year2017 to the case of the year 1998, the number ofdoctoral members in AAS as of 1998 is estimated tobe around 5,400. The same investigation shows thatthe APS had around 1,600 members in astrophysics in1998. One third of them joined both societies, and sothere were about 1,070 additional researchers joiningexclusively in the APS. Therefore, by combining bothsocieties, it can be estimated that in 1998 there wereabout 6,500 astronomers and astrophysicists workingin the United States. The Field Committee reportin 1991 delivers that the United States had a pool ofnearly 4,200 astronomers in 1990, up by 42 percentsince 1980 as seen in the caption of Figure 1 in thereport . Hence, there were about 3,000 astronomersaround 1980. Japan
In order to estimate the number of as-tronomers in Japan, we look up the membership ofthe Astronomical Society of Japan (hereafter abbre-viated as ASJ). The members of the ASJ are dividedinto full members, associate members, group members,and supporting members. Among full members, thereare student or graduate members who study astron-omy or related disciplines. According to the 2016 An-nual Report of the ASJ , as of March 31, 2017, therewere 2,059 full members including 506 student mem-bers, and 1,105 associate members. The full member-ship is defined as an individual who is engaged in as-tronomy and related fields and is responsible for theoperation of the society . In official documents thatdescribes the long-term plan of the Japanese astronom-ical community, the number of full members is regardedas the number of approximate Japanese astronomers .Therefore, the number of full members of ASJ, exclud-ing the student members, is regarded as the number ofPhD astronomers in Japan. The number for the year2017 is approximately 1,500 persons.We can obtain this number in another way. Ac-cording to a survey of members of the ASJ publishedin January 2000 (Sawa 2000), 607 persons among 1,316respondents were doctoral researchers. Assuming thatthis ratio did not change much afterwards, we obtainthe current number of doctoral astronomers in Japanto be 1,500, estimated from the fact that there are3,243 members joined the ASJ as of March 31, 2017 . Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee, 1991,
Sta-tus of Profession, in Working Papers: Astronomy and Astro-physics Panel Reports , pp.321-325, Washington D.C.:NationalAcademy Press. Guide to Join, in the web site of the Astronomical Society ofJapan, Astronomical Society of Japan, Annual Report 2016, Regulations, in the web site of Astronomical Society of Japan, Astronomy and Space Physics subcommittee of Physicscommittee in Science Council of Japan, 2010,
Prospects andLong-term Planning of Astronomy and Astrophysics , p.14. Astronomical Society of Japan, Annual Report 2016, economic Power and the size of astronomical community United Kingdom
The Royal AstronomicalSociety (hereafter abbreviated as RAS) has publishedthe demographic characteristics of RAS members asof autumn 2016 (McWhinnie 2017). The Table 2 ofthat report provides us with the number statisticsof staffs in astronomy and solar system sciences in1993, 1998, 2010, and 2016. Thus, we can count thenumber of staffs working in universities and researchestablishments with interests in astronomy, solarsystem sciences, and cross disciplinary, excludingtechnical/support staffs and visitors. From the Table 1of the report, we estimate the number-ratio of the staffsworking in cross disciplinary fields to be 10%. Thus,we obtain 1,000 scientists in 1993, 1,000 scientists in1998, 1,200 scientists in 2010, and 1,400 scientists in2016.
France
According to Mamon (2003), there wereapproximately 750 French scientists in the fields ofastronomy and astrophysics, as of 2002, 44% of themwere working in the Centre National de la RechercheScientifique (CNRS), 30% were in the Observatories,19% were working in the Universities, and 7% werehired by other institutions. Mamon (2018) esti-mates approximately 800 full-time astronomers andastrophysicists in France, by extrapolating the netgrowth rate of tenure-track scientists and faculty: 15posts per year from 1980 to 1987, 25 posts per yearfrom 1988 to 2010, and 15 per year since 2011. Inaddition, by extrapolating the postdoc ratio of InstitutAstrophysique de Paris (IAP) to other institutions ofFrance, the number of postdocs working in France isestimate to be 135 postdocs. Hence, the number ofdoctoral scientists excluding engineers with PhDs tobe approximately 935. Therefore, including retiredand others it is estimated that there are approximately1,000 astronomers or astrophysicists working in France,as of the year 2018.
Germany
A national member of the IAU onbehalf of the German scientific community is theRat Deutscher Sternwarten (hereafter abbreviated asRDS). According to Table 2.2 of Denkschrift 2017or the 2017-2030 German Physics Development Planpublished by RDS , there are approximately 2,674persons working in astronomy in Germany including556 technical persons and 706 graduates (Promotion).Considering a German academic ranking system , Redaktionskomitee des Rats deutscher Sternwarten,2017,
Denkschrift 2017, perspektiven der Astrophsik inDeutschland 2017-2030: Von den Anfaengen des Kos-mos bis zu Lebensspuren auf extrasolaren Planeten ,eds. Steinmetz, M., Brueggen, M., Burkert, A., Schin-nerer, E., Stutzki, J., Tacconi, L. Wambsganss, J. &Wilms, J., pp.25-31, Potsdam:Astronomische Gesellschaft. Steinmetz, M. 2018, a private communication. “The categoriesare roughly: W3/C4 represents full professors and directors,W2/C3 represents associate professors, AT/W1 represents as-sistant professors, E15 leaders of independent research groups,E13/E14/A13/A14 are scientists usually with a PhD degree, we estimate that 1,412 doctoral astronomers andastrophysicists were working in the German scientificcommunity as of August 2017. Such demographicsurvey was also published in 2003 titled DeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft Status und Perspektiven derAstronomie in Deutschland 2003-2016 . Its Tabelle6.2 provides us the numbers of 674 scientific staffsin German institutes as of 2001. Its Tabelle 6.3 alsogives us the numbers of even past times or 1962, 1987,and 1999. However, Germany was unified on 3 Oct1990, and so it is not certain whether the numbersincludes the east Germans or not. Hence, we adoptonly the number 577 for the year of 1999, which is asum of 375 scientists in Planstellen and 202 scientistsin Drittmittel. It is remarkable that the number ofastronomers and astrophysicists in Germany has beenincreased rapidly during the 21st century. Spain
According to a recent demographic surveyfor 50 research institutes in Spain, as of 2016, therewere 391 professional astronomers, 210 postdocs,and 186 graduates in Spain(Gorgas 2016). In thepresentation slide for Segundo informe de los recursoshumanos en Astronomia y Astrofisica en Espana ,the number statistics of human resources from 2002 to2016 are given. We show the table in Table 4 of thispaper. We count the number of scientists classified asPlantilla (posts or staffs) and Postdocs and excludethe number of predoctors to obtain the number ofPhDs. We obtain the number of doctoral astronomersor astrophysicists working in Spain to be 555 as of 2016. Italy
According to Sciortino (2013), scientists car-rying out astronomical research in Italy were work-ing either within the Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica(abbreviated as INAF) or within research groups inabout 25 universities, and there is a small numberof INFN(Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics) scien-tists doing researches on astro-particle physics or re-lated topics. He also said that these scientists wereeither permanent or temporary staff members, or ju-nior, even senior postdocs. Thus, we can regard thenumber of these scientists as that of astronomers andastrophysicists with a PhD degree working in Italy. Hereported that, as of June 2012, there were 450 staff sci-entists, 70 temporary staffs, and 270 postdoctoral re-searchers in INAF, and also that there were 95 profes-sors, 73 researchers, 30 postdoctoral researchers, andapproximately 90 graduates working in the universities(Sciortino 2013). Adding them all, we estimated that and Promotion are graduate students.” Redaktionskomitee, 2003, Deutsche Forschungsgemein-schaft Status und Perspektiven der Astronomie in Deutsch-land 2003-2016 Denkschrift, ed. Burkert, A., Genzel,R., Hasinger, G., Morfill, G., Schneider, P. Koester, D.,pp.229-230, Bonn:WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. Sociedad Espanola de Astronomia, Evolucion del per-sonal in presentation slides titled Segundo informe delos recurso humanos en Astronomia y Astrofisica en Espana, S. -H. Ahn
Table 4
Temporal changes of human resources of Spanishastronomical community.
The data is obtained fromthe presentation slide for “Segundo informe de los recursoshumanos en Astronomia y Astrofisica en Espana”.Plantilla Postdocs Predocs Total2002 233 112 130 4752003 242 123 141 5062004 251 134 159 5442005 261 148 173 5822006 279 166 190 6352007 291 179 185 6552008 306 224 209 7392009 317 247 216 7802010 320 280 216 8162011 334 276 218 8282012 348 297 229 8742013 343 265 218 8262014 341 241 214 7962016 347 208 185 740 there were 980 doctoral scientists working in astronom-ical community of Italy as of June 2012. He also men-tioned that there were 1,037 permanent staff employeesin INAF as of 2005, and 540 among them were scientistsor technologists, which is a slightly larger number thanthat of 2012. Assuming the numbers of both postdocsin INAF and doctoral scientists in universities are notchanged a lot, we estimate the number of astronomersand astrophysicists working in Italy to be 1,000 as of2005.According to the INAF website , as of November2018, the INAF has a total of 1,153 employees, and745 persons among them are research personnel, and408 persons are technical or administrative personnel.There are 466 permanent staff researchers, 61 tempo-rary staff researchers, and 271 postdocs or fellows. Ifwe can assume the human resources in the universitiesdid not change much, we can estimate the number oftheir researchers to be 190. Hence we estimate that1,000 doctoral astronomers are working in Italy, as of2018. the Republic of Korea In the Republic ofKorea or South Korea, approximately two third ofdoctoral astronomers are working in the Korea As-tronomy and Space Science Research Institute (KASIin abbreviation), and the other one third are workingin a few universities. As of November 2018, theKorea Astronomy and Space Science Institute has 147full-time employees and 27 fixed-term researchers andpostdocs with doctoral degree including approximately10 administrative staffs with doctoral degrees, and 4research fellows . Thus, KASI has approximately Astro-Dip Anagrafica dipendent, Database H1-HRMS, Size of human resources, Management information system inthe internal web site of the Korea Astronomy and Space ScienceInstitute.
168 doctoral researchers. According to Bulletins ofKorean Astronomical Society, as of April 2018, 76full-time professors, 15 research professors, and 35postdoctoral researchers are studying in the univer-sities (Korean Astronomical Society 2018). Aboutten additional PhDs are counted in other researchinstitutes, science high-schools, science museum, andprivate companies. Hence, we see that there areapproximately 310 doctorate astronomers working inRepublic of Korea.
The Netherlands
According to a surveyon the status of astronomy in the Netherlands(Boland & Habing 2013), as of 2012, the Dutchastronomers belonged to the Nederlandse Onder-zoekschool Voor Astronomie (abbreviated as NOVA),the Netherlands instituut voor radioastronomie (abbre-viated as ASTRON) investigating radioastronomy andpure astronmy, Stichting Ruimte Onderzoek Nederland(abbreviated as SRON), and VLBI ERIC Joint Institutefor VLBI ERIC (abbreviated as JIVE). Since these fourorganizations provide member lists in their website, wecount the number of doctoral scientists in the employeelists. We also visit some of the personal websites tocheck whether he or she has a PhD degree.As of 2018, four universities participate the NOVA:Amsterdam, Groningen, Nijmegen, and Leiden . Am-sterdam has 54 PhDs among 161 employees, 49 doc-toral students and 45 master students. Groningen has40 doctors among 93 employees and 11 PhD students.Nijmegen has 31 doctors among 68 employees, 21 doc-toral students, and 8 master students. Leiden observa-tory has 116 PhDs among 450 employees, 89 doctoralstudents, and 90 master students. Thus, there are 241doctors in NOVA as of 2018.According to NOVA’s 2015 annual report , theNOVA members consisted of approximately 56 FTEsenior staff members in permanent and tenure-trackpositions, approximately 10 FTE senior postdocs, 83FTE postdoctoral fellows, approximately 40 instrumen-talists, 171 PhD students, and 5 FTE co-workers fromASTRON and SRON. Thus, the number of astronomerswith PhD degrees involved with the NOVA program wasapproximately 150 as of 2015.ASTRON has four groups including astronomygroup, radio observatory, R&D labs, and NOVAIR/Optical . Excluding technological staffs and ad-ministrative staffs, ASTRON has 52 PhDs among 146employees. According to a private communication withAnneke Steenbergen , there were 48 scientists em-ployed excluding R&D engineers, 20 having permanentpositions and 28 having fixed-term contracts as of 2018, NOVA web site, http://nova-astronomy.nl/people/ NOVA Annual Report 2013-2014-2015, http://nova-astronomy.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Annual-Report-2013-2014-2015-PDF.pdf ASTRON web site: Steenbergen, A. a private communication. “At the end of2017, ASTRON employed 20 scientists (excluding R&D engi-neers) on a permanent basis, and 28 scientists on fixed-termcontracts. At the end of 2016, these figures were 14 and 31,respectively.” economic Power and the size of astronomical community . It has 89 PhDs among 204 employees.JIVE has 10 doctors among 26 employees . Hence, thetotal number of PhDs working in these three organisa-tions is estimated to be 151 as of 2018.If all being combined, it is estimated that there areapproximately 390 doctoral researchers investigatingastronomy and astrophysics in the Netherlands. Thereare also highly educated engineers working in the Dutchastronomical community as much as this number. Itis also remarkable that the Netherlands host a coupleof huge centers for astronomical researches and spaceexploration in Europe. Canada
According to a survey by the Associa-tion of Canadian Universities for Research in Astron-omy (abbreviated as ACURA), as of the year 2010,the Canadian astronomical community consists 200professor-level researchers and 100 postdocs, and 300graduate students . According to an updated sur-vey of ACURA, as of 2013, 17 professors, 37 post-docs, and 71 graduate students were increased . Thus,there were approximately 350 PhDs as of 2013, and thegrowth rate was only 3%. Adopting this growth rate,the number of doctoral astronomers is extrapolated tobe approximately 400 as of 2018.On the other hand, according to Dr. Racinesresearch , the number of tenure stream facultymembers, adjuncts and postdocs were 164 as of 1999,247 as of 2004, 285 as of 2008, 305 as of 2010, 341as of 2014. If we also apply the manpower growthrate of 3% and extrapolate, then we can estimatethe number of PhD astronomers and astrophysicistsworking in Canada to be 410 as of 2018, which is closeto the numbers estimated by the demographic surveyby ACURA. In conclusion, we estimate the numberof PhD astronomers and astrophysicists working inCanada is approximately 400, as of 2008 Nov. Australia
The number of doctoral astronomersin Australia is given in Sadler (2017). According tothis paper, the number of astronomy jobs in Australiahave been changed from 417 in 2005 to 542 in 2010 andto 527 in 2014. In 2014, the percentage of full-timeastronomers is 64%, so the number of doctoral re- Members list of each group in the SRON web site: Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE) web site: Canadian Astronomical Society, 2011, “Unveiling theCosmos: a Vision for Canadian Astronomy - Re-port of the Long Range Plan 2010 Panel”, p.13, p.83. Canadian Astronomical Society, 2015, “Unveilingthe Cosmos: Canadian Astronomy 2016-2020”, Re-port of the mid-Term Review 2015 Panel, pp.104-106. http://casca.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/MTR2016nocover.pdf Racine, R. “The evolution of astronomical and as-trophysical populations in Canadian Universities”, searchers is estimated to be approximately 530, amongwhich 340 are full-time astronomers.
Taiwan
In order to estimate the number of doc-toral astronomers in Taiwan as of 2018, the professors,researchers, and postdoctoral researchers working inTaiwan’s major astronomical institutes and universities,as mentioned in a paper on the history of Taiwanese as-tronomy (Ip 2017), were surveyed in their websites. In-stitute of Astronomy in National Ting Hua Universityhas 11 doctoral researchers, National Taiwan Univer-sity has 4 doctoral researchers, National Taiwan NormalUniversity has 8 doctoral researchers, National Cen-tral University has 17 doctoral researchers, AcademiaSinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics has 83doctoral researchers, and Academia Sinica Institute ofPhysics has 4 doctoral researchers working in Taiwan.Thus, the number of doctoral researchers working in as-tronomy and astrophysics in Taiwan is estimated to beapproximately 130. R EFERENCES
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