*Disappointed at the lack of Engineers in that, only to realise the Engineer is off doing something useful instead*
Why would you do say something like that? Last time I checked, physicist created the majority of the framework that engineers utilize
Mechanical engineers: equations from classical mechanics (kinematic equations, Hamiltonian dynamics).
Electrical engineers: Maxwell's equations and all their complicated variations of these difficult partial differential equations. Let's not forget Fourier analysis.
Chemical Engineers: So many to name but Hamiltonian dynamics, Lagrangian dynamics, Pascal, Boyle, and the list goes on.
Aerospace Engineers: Reynolds, Bernoulli, Cartan....
Then they're the chemist and materials scientist that create a great deal of novel metals and materials for engineers. Correct me if my I'm wrong, any time a new technology is created, it's usually done by physicist, chemist, and other physical scientist (masers, lasers, and so forth). You do know that microprocessors (p-n junctions) were created by physicist? Matter of fact, quantum computing and a great deal of nanotechnology is being created by scientist. Do you know why? Because that's what scientist do. They work in areas and problems that no one has ever tried to understand. That's what scientist are-researchers. This is why scientific education is so long and it requires a Ph.D for the most part and why scientist have to learn so much physics, mathematics and other disciplines. It's only when the science is understood that engineers come along and have a general guideline to work with that they can do anything. The hardest part is always understanding the dynamics of any system.
Matter of fact, as chemical physicist, I was hired to develop methods in reactionary dynamics using statistical mechanics for chemical engineers in reactor designs. You know why most engineers don't do that? Because they don't have the physics or mathematical background. Now, I'm not saying that they're not capable of learning statistical mechanics at the graduate level, anyone is capable of doing that with enough training but at that point you're not doing engineering anymore-it's science. Respectfully, you don't seem to understand the breath of science. I'll give you a brief summary:
Drugs: Doctors, for the most part, don't do this unless they have Ph.D's. Overall it's organic chemist, physical chemist, and medicinal chemist that synthesize new drugs.
Materials (polymers, quantum dots,... ): Again chemist, solid state physicist, solid state chemist, inorganic chemist, and so forth. All the new technology being created concurrently for constructing the framework of technology for solar cells, batteries, and so forth are coming from scientist.
Any new technology: I mean any new technology like quantum computing... absolutely scientist. For instance, quantum computing requires so much physics,mathematics, and abstraction that I've yet to meet an engineer that knows the physics of quantum field theory or advanced group theory-much less the mathematics of Riemann manifolds and Lie groups to pursue such a difficult field as quantum computing. Again, it's because their training and education doesn't require it.
Many problems in engineering itself requires scientific analysis. A great deal of physicist do this because many times the engineering becomes a computational nightmare that physicist and mathematicians are hired to employ more efficient mathematical machinary.
There's just too many fields to mention.
In my own scientific research I've been responsible for the following:
-Synthesis of new drugs (specifically to combat against pancreatic cancer) and our research group has been pretty successful.
-Optimized systems of productions to lower the cost of drugs. In our case, a particular drug cost $90,000 dollars per pill. After heavy scientific research, the cost was brought down to a little over a $1,000.
-Understanding how certain drugs, using quantum mechanics, react in varying environments. Ultimately this is very difficult research because of the enormous computing efforts to ascertain the correct molecular dynamics to evaluate such systems. Matter of fact, we had to develop computer programs for some of our algorithms because they didn't exist. This is very typical in science.
-Developed protocols for chemical abstraction for chemical and industrial engineers via HPLC and gas chromatography.
I don't know... I would say some of the above is useful and is the type of work scientist do.