Richard Hamming’s “You and Your Research” speech: his introduction grabs your attention, doesn’t it? It grabbed mine.
I went searching for the little story I remembered about “what is the most important problem and why aren’t you working on it?” and eventually found this speech. For some reason I had misremembered this as a Shockley anecdote but soon enough Hamming’s name popped up and I found the anecdote.
This grabbed me though—his introduction. Emphasis added by me.
It’s a pleasure to be here. The title of my talk is, “You and Your Research.” It is not about managing research, it is about how you individually do your research. I could give a talk on the other subject – but it’s not, it’s about you. I’m not talking about ordinary run-of-the-mill research; I’m talking about great research. And for the sake of describing great research I’ll occasionally say Nobel-Prize type of work. It doesn’t have to gain the Nobel Prize, but I mean those kinds of things which we perceive are significant things. Relativity, if you want, Shannon’s information theory, any number of outstanding theories – that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
Now, how did I come to do this study? At Los Alamos I was brought in to run the computing machines which other people had got going, so those scientists and physicists could get back to business. I saw I was a stooge. I saw that although physically I was the same, they were different. And to put the thing bluntly, I was envious. I wanted to know why they were so different from me. I saw Feynman up close. I saw Fermi and Teller. I saw Oppenheimer. I saw Hans Bethe: he was my boss. I saw quite a few very capable people. I became very interested in the difference between those who do and those who might have done.
When I came to Bell Labs, I came into a very productive department. Bode was the department head at the time; Shannon was there, and there were other people. I continued examining the questions, “Why?” and “What is the difference?” I continued subsequently by reading biographies, autobiographies, asking people questions such as: “How did you come to do this?” I tried to find out what are the differences. And that’s what this talk is about.
You can find the speech transcript everywhere. I used this source.
Read the Q and A at the end about the genesis of UNIX. Fascinating.
The new, focusing insight for me is also in the Q and A about the relative importance of papers, talks, and books. This has direct impact on my life and work. I will say no more since this is an anonymous blog.
Edit, a few days later. If I have a thought I should write it down. I have no idea what secret thoughts, ever so precious, I was thinking when I stopped myself in that last paragraph.
Ephemeral. That is my name. Such is my existence. So too are my thoughts. So too is my own memory, and others’ memories of me.