Biologist in 1665: Hooke names the "cell"

This page follows the profession from Aristotle's animal catalogues and Linnaeus's naming system through Darwin, Wallace and Mendel's separate routes to the same insight, Pasteur's germ theory, Rosalind Franklin's overlooked X-ray photographs and Barbara McClintock's ignored decades, to PCR, the Human Genome Project and CRISPR. It covers how people actually train for the job today, what a working day at the bench or in the field demands, who reached the top of the field and how, and how much of the work AI and automation can realistically take over.

Do you need a PhD to be a biologist? Not for every biology job — many research-technician, lab-associate and field-survey roles hire people with only a bachelor's or master's degree. But leading an independent research program, running a university lab, or holding many senior positions in pharmaceutical and biotech research nearly always requires a PhD, since it is the credential that certifies someone can design and defend original research alone.

It depends heavily on the role. A bachelor's degree (three to four years) is enough for many entry-level research or field positions. Becoming an independent principal investigator who runs a lab typically takes far longer: roughly four years of undergraduate study, five to six years for a PhD, and often several more years of postdoctoral research before a permanent position.