How interchangeable are physics, mathematics, and computer science degrees?

[Lorenzo]

There are physicists who have won the Fields Medal (basically the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize) and mathematicians who have won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Some people, like Max Born, made contributions to both fields and are famous as both a physicist and a mathematician.

I have seen those who graduated with physics degrees get jobs as mathematicians on Wall Street and I've even seen physicists teach mathematics lectures and write mathematics text books.

And the opposite seems to happen too - Theodor Kaluza for example graduated in mathematics but turned his focus towards physics after leaving school despite not having a physics degree. He made contributions to relativity and string theory.

And what about computer science? I have seen both physics and mathematics graduates get hired by software development companies to develop code. OK, so you don't really need to have a degree to be a programmer and part of being a computer scientist is contributing original ideas. However, one person I know of graduated with a degree in theoretical physics but now works mostly in fundamental computer science research (and it's in a field of CS that has nothing to do with physics).

My old maths teacher had a degree in computer science - not mathematics. Although I suppose CS could be considered a part of mathematics depending on how theory-heavy the course is.

So how interchangeable are these three degrees exactly? Could someone with one of these degrees simply switch to one or both of the other fields (e.g. a physicist becoming a mathematician or a mathematician becoming a computer scientist) if their interests started to drift after graduation?

[Foxpup]

They're not interchangeable, and moving to another field is no simple matter. That said, they all require similar mental aptitude, so anyone proficient in one field should be perfectly capable of becoming proficient in another, given the time to actually study it.

[xmaxbit]

They're not interchangeable, and moving to another field is no simple matter. That said, they all require similar mental aptitude, so anyone proficient in one field should be perfectly capable of becoming proficient in another, given the time to actually study it.

Apart from all those things I liked your avatar , still wondering how did you manage to put a fox art inside a QR code .
People from all over the world have different taste of works which could be simultaneous , this does not mean degrees are interchangable .