Roughly put, scientists get the ideas and then technicians help put them to the test. For a concrete example, consider the physical sciences – physics, chemistry, biology, etc. The technicians are commonly visible in labs or in the field as they build apparatus, test it, record data, help interpret results.
Sometimes, scientists had to keep out of the way of the technicians. Famously, whenever physicist Wolfgang Pauli came into a lab to see the equipment something would break. The lines get blurred, sometimes markedly.
As a lifelong scientist, I built a lot of my equipment and computing infrastructure. Conversely, technicians also come up with some fundamental scientific ideas. The blurring of the scientist/technician contrast was especially prominent at the great Bell Labs. Everyone working on anything scientific or in engineering was a “member of technical staff,” whether a welder or a Nobel laureate. Didn't that work out well!
Bell Labs gave us the transistor, the laser, the cell phone, and more. Alas, Bell Labs was broken up during the deregulation of the AT&T phone company in 1982. Its legacy, however, is built into our modern lives at every turn.
This has been an outreach activity of the Las Cruces Academy, viewable at GreatSchools.org.
Source: Personal experience + Nature, 8 May 2025, pp. 308 ff.
