You and Your Research
Richard Hamming
``You and Your Research''
Transcription of the<br>Bell Communications Research Colloquium<br>Seminar<br>7 March 1986
J. F. Kaiser<br>Bell Communications Research<br>445 South<br>Street<br>Morristown, NJ 07962-1910<br>jfk@bellcore.com
At a seminar in the Bell Communications Research Colloquia Series, Dr.<br>Richard W. Hamming, a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,<br>California and a retired Bell Labs scientist, gave a very interesting and<br>stimulating talk, `You and Your Research' to an overflow audience of some 200<br>Bellcore staff members and visitors at the Morris Research and Engineering<br>Center on March 7, 1986. This talk centered on Hamming's observations and<br>research on the question ``Why do so few scientists make significant<br>contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?'' From his more than<br>forty years of experience, thirty of which were at Bell Laboratories, he has<br>made a number of direct observations, asked very pointed questions of scientists<br>about what, how, and why they did things, studied the lives of great scientists<br>and great contributions, and has done introspection and studied theories of<br>creativity. The talk is about what he has learned in terms of the properties of<br>the individual scientists, their abilities, traits, working habits, attitudes,<br>and philosophy.
In order to make the information in the talk more widely available, the tape<br>recording that was made of that talk was carefully transcribed. This<br>transcription includes the discussions which followed in the question and answer<br>period. As with any talk, the transcribed version suffers from translation as<br>all the inflections of voice and the gestures of the speaker are lost; one must<br>listen to the tape recording to recapture that part of the presentation. While<br>the recording of Richard Hamming's talk was completely intelligible, that of<br>some of the questioner's remarks were not. Where the tape recording was not<br>intelligible I have added in parentheses my impression of the questioner's<br>remarks. Where there was a question and I could identify the questioner, I have<br>checked with each to ensure the accuracy of my interpretation of their remarks.
INTRODUCTION OF DR. RICHARD W. HAMMING
As a speaker in the Bell Communications Research Colloquium Series, Dr.<br>Richard W. Hamming of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, was<br>introduced by Alan G. Chynoweth, Vice President, Applied Research, Bell<br>Communications Research.
Alan G. Chynoweth: Greetings colleagues, and also to many of our<br>former colleagues from Bell Labs who, I understand, are here to be with us today<br>on what I regard as a particularly felicitous occasion. It gives me very great<br>pleasure indeed to introduce to you my old friend and colleague from many many<br>years back, Richard Hamming, or Dick Hamming as he has always been know to all<br>of us.
Dick is one of the all time greats in the mathematics and computer science<br>arenas, as I'm sure the audience here does not need reminding. He received his<br>early education at the Universities of Chicago and Nebraska, and got his Ph.D.<br>at Illinois; he then joined the Los Alamos project during the war. Afterwards,<br>in 1946, he joined Bell Labs. And that is, of course, where I met Dick - when I<br>joined Bell Labs in their physics research organization. In those days, we were<br>in the habit of lunching together as a physics group, and for some reason this<br>strange fellow from mathematics was always pleased to join us. We were always<br>happy to have him with us because he brought so many unorthodox ideas and views.<br>Those lunches were stimulating, I can assure you.
While our professional paths have not been very close over the years,<br>nevertheless I've always recognized Dick in the halls of Bell Labs and have<br>always had tremendous admiration for what he was doing. I think the record<br>speaks for itself. It is too long to go through all the details, but let me<br>point out, for example, that he has written seven books and of those seven books<br>which tell of various areas of mathematics and computers and coding and<br>information theory, three are already well into their second edition. That is<br>testimony indeed to the prolific output and the stature of Dick Hamming.
I think I last met him - it must have been about ten years ago - at a rather<br>curious little conference in Dublin, Ireland where we were both speakers. As<br>always, he was tremendously entertaining. Just one more example of the<br>provocative thoughts that he comes up with: I remember him saying, ``There are<br>wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear,<br>and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think.'' Well, with Dick<br>Hamming around, we don't need a computer. I think that we are in for an<br>extremely entertaining talk.
THE TALK: ``You and Your Research'' by Dr. Richard W. Hamming
It's a pleasure to be here. I doubt if I can live up to the Introduction. The<br>title of my talk is, ``You and Your Research.'' It is not...