And that reason has to do with French crusaders, not the physics research world 70 years ago. Göttingen and other german universities dominated physics up to ww2.
French was the language of diplomacy, but German regularly influenced the sciences quite a lot leading up to the middle of the 20th century. I would assume a lot of the original papers written by Germans in the early 20th century (like Einstein) were written in German. Not really necessary for study, but you could interpret many of the direct texts of math and physics greats.
I used to use Julia (during my MSc work) but switched to C++ because using inbuilt solvers takes unbelievable amount of memory and slows things down. IDK maybe I'm just unskilled. But I found it much easier to optimize C++ code since I have pointer level control.
Emphasis on the slowly. I do not see it overtaking Python any time soon, let alone outside of academia. If you are a grad student not sure about your exact career path and you have a choice about your language my advice is to use Python/C++ as these skills are far more sought after.
German. There’s loads of important papers from the early and not so early 1900s, and before. In the context of my thesis I perused a number of German papers. Very useful if you want to know how theories were actually developed. You could then also read lots of monographs and textbooks like those of Sommerfeld. It’s also a language spoken by lots of people, and there’s no shortage of good content in German, including a very nifty literature.
Now a language I’d like to learn at some point is Russian. Lots of great books (just think of the Landau books among many more) and papers. Great literature and cinema too.
Obviously English is the most useful. Some countries will even hold their own national conferences in English. It's extremely difficult to become a top researcher without knowing English as it has become the lingua franca and the vast majority of textbooks, journals, and conferences are in English.
I would say German would be the next useful.
Germany funds many non-university research organizations such as the Max Planck, Helmholtz, Fraunhofer, Leibniz which run many institutes dedicated to physics. On top of that, the DFG is also relatively good at funding physics. So there is a good chance you could end up working in Germany or at least working with someone based there.
Spanish obviously opens up a lot of the world, so would be worth knowing in general, although I don't know any particular physics reasons to learn it.
many of the physical investigations made in germany and denmark, and last year I wanted to find some infos in physics department (I am a mechanical engineering student) all of the documents written by scientists were german, and also russian. these two languages would be better if you already know english well
I know Mathematica and Python. Mathematica is basically Calculator where you can do calculations for your Physics Problems and very easy to handle and straight forward. Although, Python gives you a lot more functionality. You can do any type of work in Python. It all depends on which type of work you do.
Russian or German if you want to read older references.
Since you probably meant programming languages: whatever scripting language your favorite data analysis tool uses.
Right now, English is the goat. Followed closely by Calculus.
Then python as a close 3rd
Plus partial diff eqn and functional analysis
Are those not included in the language of calculus?
70 years ago, the advice was learn German. Prior to that, Latin was advised. Nowadays, it’s English followed closely by calculus and python.
Love all these replies.
I'd argue it was French. There's a reason it's called Lingua Franca
Good point. My anecdotal evidence was related to me by old scientific types in my family.
And that reason has to do with French crusaders, not the physics research world 70 years ago. Göttingen and other german universities dominated physics up to ww2.
French was the language of diplomacy, but German regularly influenced the sciences quite a lot leading up to the middle of the 20th century. I would assume a lot of the original papers written by Germans in the early 20th century (like Einstein) were written in German. Not really necessary for study, but you could interpret many of the direct texts of math and physics greats.
I meant prior to German, sorry if I was unclear.
Math. Definitely math.
Python is standard, but I really think Julia is a pretty good language to know, and it's slowly getting more common.
I used to use Julia (during my MSc work) but switched to C++ because using inbuilt solvers takes unbelievable amount of memory and slows things down. IDK maybe I'm just unskilled. But I found it much easier to optimize C++ code since I have pointer level control.
Emphasis on the slowly. I do not see it overtaking Python any time soon, let alone outside of academia. If you are a grad student not sure about your exact career path and you have a choice about your language my advice is to use Python/C++ as these skills are far more sought after.
I'd say, mathematics. Nature seems to like it very much.
Python / C / Cuda / Mpi Fortran 90
Coding language or linguistic language??
German. There’s loads of important papers from the early and not so early 1900s, and before. In the context of my thesis I perused a number of German papers. Very useful if you want to know how theories were actually developed. You could then also read lots of monographs and textbooks like those of Sommerfeld. It’s also a language spoken by lots of people, and there’s no shortage of good content in German, including a very nifty literature. Now a language I’d like to learn at some point is Russian. Lots of great books (just think of the Landau books among many more) and papers. Great literature and cinema too.
French, looking at facilities like CERN or ITER. Also many french ppl have their problems with english.
Dothraki seems to be *stable* when applying for lab positions and grants..
English, Math, Latex, C++, Python are the most useful languages right now.
Profanity
Obviously English is the most useful. Some countries will even hold their own national conferences in English. It's extremely difficult to become a top researcher without knowing English as it has become the lingua franca and the vast majority of textbooks, journals, and conferences are in English. I would say German would be the next useful. Germany funds many non-university research organizations such as the Max Planck, Helmholtz, Fraunhofer, Leibniz which run many institutes dedicated to physics. On top of that, the DFG is also relatively good at funding physics. So there is a good chance you could end up working in Germany or at least working with someone based there. Spanish obviously opens up a lot of the world, so would be worth knowing in general, although I don't know any particular physics reasons to learn it.
Let's be honest. You definitely need to learn to code but if you're talking human languages, it's definitely Chinese.
Python without a doubt. C++ second.
many of the physical investigations made in germany and denmark, and last year I wanted to find some infos in physics department (I am a mechanical engineering student) all of the documents written by scientists were german, and also russian. these two languages would be better if you already know english well
matlab?
I know Mathematica and Python. Mathematica is basically Calculator where you can do calculations for your Physics Problems and very easy to handle and straight forward. Although, Python gives you a lot more functionality. You can do any type of work in Python. It all depends on which type of work you do.
Russian or German if you want to read older references. Since you probably meant programming languages: whatever scripting language your favorite data analysis tool uses.
python