The Art of Being a Scientist: A Guide for Graduate Students and their Mentors

This is a hands-on guide for graduate students and young researchers wishing to perfect the practical skills needed for a successful research career. By teaching junior scientists to develop effective research habits, the book helps to make the experience of graduate study a more efficient and rewarding one. This book is an outgrowth of the notes for the graduate course, "The Art of Science," taught by the authors at Colorado School of Mines and highly rated and appreciated by students over the years. A sample curriculum, which parallels the curriculum followed in the authors' course, is available in the book as Appendix B, and as an online resource. This sample is offered as a possible starting point for instructors in graduate schools wanting to teach a similar course at their university.

Topics covered in the book include: choosing a research topic, department, and advisor; making workplans; the ethics of research; using scientific literature; perfecting oral and written communication; publishing papers; writing proposals; managing time effectively; and planning a scientific career and applying for jobs in research and industry. The wealth of advice is invaluable to students, junior researchers and mentors in all fields of science, engineering, and the humanities.

Roel Snieder holds the Keck Foundation Endowed Chair of Basic Exploration Science at the Colorado School of Mines. In 1984 he received a Masters degree in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics from Princeton University, and in 1987 a Ph.D. in seismology from Utrecht University. For this work he received the Vening Meinesz award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. In 1988 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Université Paris VI, and was appointed in 1989 as associate professor at Utrecht University. In 1993 he was promoted to full professor of seismology at Utrecht University, where from 1997-2000 he served as Dean of the Faculty of Earth Sciences. In 2000 he was elected as Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He is also the author of A Guided Tour of Mathematical Methods: For the Physical Sciences (also published by Cambridge University Press). He has served on the editorial boards of Geophysical Journal International, Inverse Problems, and Reviews of Geophysics.

Ken Larner is University Emeritus Professor of Geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM). He received the degree of geophysical engineer from CSM in 1960 and a Ph.D. in geophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970. During his final nine years with Western Geophysical Company (1970–1988), he was vice president for geophysical research, leaving to become the Charles Henry Green Professor of Exploration Geophysics at CSM (1988–2004). He served as president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) in 1988–89. In 1996 he received the SEG's highest award, the Maurice Ewing Gold Medal, and in 2003 the Kapitsa Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.