[analog31]

I'm a physicist, and married to a chemist.

It gets worse, the deeper you get into it. The reason is that your work hours are rarely dictated by a boss, as much as by the progress of the experiment itself. In my case while in grad school, if an experiment was "running," after multiple false starts, it could be anywhere from 0.1 to 100 hours away from breaking down, and everybody in the group -- including the professor -- worked in shifts to reel the data in. I was good with hardware, so I was on call for repairs. In my wife's case, some reactions and tests just took a certain amount of time, and stuff began to deteriorate if you walked away from it.

There are people who accept these kinds of situations, others who are forced into it by circumstances. I'd never force anybody into it. There should be plenty of 9-5 careers.