I came across the transcript to a talk Richard Hamming gave to the Bell Communications Research Colloquium in 1986, and was inspired to share some of his thoughts about great scientists and doing great work, as they mirror many of my own ideas about cultivating curiosity and curious explorers.
While at Bell Labs, Mr. Hamming worked in various aspects of computing, numerical analysis and management of computing. He is probably best known for his pioneering work on error-codes, his work on integrating differential equations and the spectral window which bears his name.
The greatest piece of advice that I took from this presentation was what Mr. Hamming speaks about in this way, “You can’t always know exactly where to be, but you can keep active in places where something might happen. And even if you believe that great science is a matter of luck, you can stand on a mountain top where lightening strikes; you don’t have to hide in the valley where you are safe.” This echoes my own ideas about planting the seeds for investigation and novel connections and that the best way to cultivate curiosity is to get out into the world and experience it firsthand.
The presentation given by Mr. Hamming centered on the concept that you need to know and manage yourself, your weaknesses, your strengths, and your bad faults. How can you convert a fault into an asset? How can you convert a situation where you haven’t enough tools to move into a direction when that’s exactly what you need to do? The successful individual changes the viewpoint and what was a defect becomes an asset.
Inspiring thoughts from this presentation:
”Yes, I would like to do something significant”- Why shouldn’t you do significant things in this one life, however you define significant?
Luck does not cover everything. As Pasteur said, “Luck favors the prepared mind”. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. Yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not.
Hard work and drive count. Newton said, “If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results”. Solid work, steadily applied, gets you surprisingly far.
One of the characteristics you see, and many people have it including great scientists, are that usually when they were young they had independent thoughts and had the courage to pursue them.
One success can bring confidence and courage. You get your courage up and believe that you can do important work, and then you can. Courage is going forward under incredible circumstances; you think and continue to think.
Once you become famous it is hard to work on small problems.
“Knowledge and productivity are like compounded interest”. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity-it is very much like compounded interest.
Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well! They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory.
Great contributions are rarely done by adding another decimal place. It comes down to emotional commitment. Most great scientists are completely committed to their problem.
If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work. It’s perfectly obvious. Great scientists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them.
It’s not the consequences that make a problem important; it is that you have a reasonable attack. That is what makes a problem important.
“He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.”
“It is a poor workman who blames his tools-the good man gets on with the job, given what he’s got, and gets the best answer he can”.
It is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class work because the truth is; the value is in the struggle more than it is in the result. The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in it.
If you want to do something, don’t ask, do it! Don’t give someone the chance to tell you “No”. But if you want a “No”, it’s easy to get a “No”.
