As part of the Columbia University School of Engineering studies of research administration, a project has been under way for the past year and one‐half to examine the use of scientific research teams in industrial research operations. One portion of the survey, which has to do with data on personnel employed and needed by industrial research laboratories, has recently been released. A questionnaire distributed to the approximately 3300 industrial research laboratories listed by the National Research Council resulted in 1436 codable answers covering a total of 44,639 professional research workers in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, and other categories. Of these, 1988 are listed as physicists.