A Ph.D in.........guns?

[MKSheppard]

http://club.guns.ru/eng/konovalov.html

I remember, back in November of 1996, I had an exclusive opportunity of being present at the birthday party of an outstanding American gun designer Gene Stoner, the father of M-16. It was an entirely family gathering of Stoner's closest friends. Stoner was not feeling well - he just had had a course of chemotherapy. The only "stranger", along with me, was Gennadiy Nikonov, designer of the AN-94 assault rifle.

During our conversations, Stoner noted that in the States, the small arms industry was experiencing serious problems. He went on to say that out of each 10 University graduates, only one had a qualification of a mechanical engineer. None of them were specialists in small arms designing.

In response, Gennadiy Nikonov said that, despite the huge problems of the industry, Universities in St. Petersburg, Tula and Izhevsk were still providing higher education for future creators of small arms systems. A good share of MSc and PhD candidates were students of small arms science. Nikonov at that time was reading up for his PhD dissertation.

[Zoink]

I guess you can have a PhD in anything really. My great-great uncles got his degree in steam engines ('steam' engineer I guess), it was relevant at the time, but you are unlikely to find somethiing like that now. I think here in North America its really up to industry to train young engineers in gun design, through a proper apprenticeship program.