Two Body Problem (orig)

I recommend this Nature Journal special report on romantic relationships between scientists from February by Jennifer Ouellette. She is a self-employed science writer who married a Caltech physicist. Apparently a group at Stanford is interested in actually studying the two body problem. I found this section interesting:

A 1998 survey by the American Physical Society found that although only about 6%
of its members are women, 43% of these are married to other physicists. In contrast, only 6% of married male physicists have a physicist spouse. Other studies have found that almost twice as many women chemists are married to or partnered with another chemist as compared to their male colleagues, and 80% of women mathematicians are married to other scientists.

I'm not too suprised about the physicist numbers, doing a back of the envelope calculation based on my department at work: 100% of the female physicists are married to other physicists and 40% of the male physicists are married to mail-order brides.
I think a lot of this has to do with the nature of grad school. Most scientists go to grad school in their mid-twenties, and at least in physics and chemistry you tend to have a limited life outside the lab. You're going to end up dating who's around so for the straight men, there's usually a rather limited selection close to home. I wonder what the statistics are in biology or biochemistry which has a larger female population relative to physics.

On a personal level, Shanna and I both went to a small liberal arts college and both went into chemistry, considering how inbred both those populations are, we were pretty much destined for each other.