You and your work *
Long stuff. Reading time is about 40 minutes.
Dr. Richard Hamming, professor at the Monterey Maritime School in California and retired scientist at Bell Labs, gave a very interesting and challenging lecture “You and Your Research” to a crowded audience of about 200 Bellcore employees and guests at the Bell Communications Colloquium seminar on March 7, 1986. Research. This lecture describes Hamming's observations in part of the question “Why do so few scientists make a significant contribution to science and so many are forgotten in the long run?”. During his more than forty-year career, whose thirty years were spent at Bell Laboratories, he made a series of direct observations, asked scientists very sharp questions about what, how, whence, why they did and what they did, studied the lives of great scientists and great achievements, and led introspection and studied theories of creativity. This lecture is about what he learned about the properties of individual scientists, their abilities, traits, work habits, attitude and philosophy.
Richard Hamming was represented by Alan Chinovet, Vice President of Applied Research at Bell Communications Research.
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Greetings, colleagues, and also many of our former colleagues from Bell Labs, who, as I understand it, are with us today at this very appropriate event. It is with great pleasure that I present to you my old friend and long-time colleague - Richard Hamming, or Dick Hamming, as he has always been known to all of us.
Dick is one of the classics of mathematics and computer science, of which, I am sure, the audience does not need to be reminded. He received his early education at the universities of Chicago and Nebraska, and his doctoral degree in Illinois; then he joined the Los Alamos project during the war. Then, in 1946, he came to Bell Labs. There I met him when I joined their organization of research in the field of physics. In those days, we, the group of physicists, had the habit of dining together, and for some reason this strange math guy was always glad to join us. We were always pleased with his presence, because he brought so many original ideas and views. I can assure you that those meals stimulated.
I think the last time I met him - it was about ten years ago - at a rather curious small conference in Dublin, where we both spoke. As always, he was amazingly interesting. Just as an example of daring thoughts that he gives out, I remember how he said: “There are wavelengths that people cannot see, sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think.” . Well, with Dick Hamming, we don't need a computer. I think we got into a very exciting lecture.
I am pleased to be here. I doubt that I can match this view. My lecture is called "You and Your Research." She is not about research management; it is about how you personally conduct your work. I could give a lecture on a different topic, but I will talk about you. I am not talking about ordinary, unremarkable work; I'm talking about a great job. To make it clear what I call a great work, I will sometimes say “work for the Nobel Prize”. She doesn't have to get the Nobel Prize, but I mean things that we think are great. The theory of relativity, if you like, Shannon's theory of information, any other outstanding theories - I am talking about such things.
How did I start learning this? In Los Alamos, they took me to support the computers that other people put in so that scientists and physicists could return to their work. I saw that I was just a boy. Although physically I was the same, they were different. And I, frankly, envied. I wanted to know why they were so different from me. I saw Feynman closely. I saw Fermi and Teller. I saw Oppenheimer. I saw Hans Bethe - he was my boss. I saw quite capable people. It became very interesting to me, what is the difference between people who do meaningful things and people who do not do them.
When I came to Bell Labs, I came to a very productive department. Bod was the head of the department at the time; Shannon and others were there. I continued to study the questions “Why?” And “What is the difference?”. I continued reading biographies and autobiographies, asking people questions like "How did you come to do this?". I tried to discover what the differences are. I will tell about them.
Why is this lecture important? I think it is important, because each of you has only one life. Even if you believe in reincarnation, it will not help you from life to life! Why don't you do meaningful things in this life, whatever you think are meaningful? I will not say what is meaningful. You know what I mean. I will talk mainly about science, because this is what I studied. But much of what I saw applies to other areas. Outstanding work is characterized by almost the same in most areas, I'm just talking about science.
To reach you personally, I have to speak in the first person. I have to make you discard modesty and say to yourself: “Yes, I want to do first-class work.” Our society disapproves of those who intend to do a really good job. "You should not. Good luck should fall on you and you will do something great by chance. " Well, this is very stupid. I say: why don't you intend to do something meaningful. You do not have to tell other people about it. But shouldn't you say to yourself: “Yes, I want to do something meaningful”?
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Let me start, not logically, but psychologically. The big objection that I see is the opinion that great science is being done at random. "This is all a matter of chance." But look at Einstein. Notice how many different good things he did. Was it all luck? Is it too much? Look at Shannon. He did not only information theory. A few years before, he had done some other good things, some of which were still locked up under the lock of cryptography. He did a lot of good things.
You see again and again that good people do more than one good thing in life. Sometimes a person does just one thing in his entire life, and we will talk about it later. But very often there is a repetition. I contend that luck does not explain everything. And I will quote Pasteur, who said: "Good luck favors the prepared mind." It expresses the way I think. Indeed, there is an element of luck, and at the same time it is not. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, this is good luck. What you do is luck; but the fact that you do something is not.
For example, when I came to Bell Labs, for some time I shared an office with Shannon. Just when he was engaged in information theory, I was engaged in coding theory. Suspiciously, that we two were doing this in the same place at the same time — it was in the air. And you can say that it was an accident. On the other hand, you can say: “But why among all the people at Bell Labs at that time there were those two who did this?” Yes, in part this is luck, and partly - a prepared mind. On the "part" I will talk. So, although I’m going back to luck a few more times, I want to get rid of the idea that luck is the only factor that determines whether you will do a great job or not. I contend that you have some, albeit incomplete, control over this. And I will quote Newton on this subject. Newton said: "If others thought as tensely as I did, they would get similar results."
One of the characteristics that many people have, including great scientists, is that when they were young, they usually had independent thoughts and the courage to practice them. For example, Einstein, about 12 or 14 years old, asked himself the question: “What would a wave of light look like if I moved at the speed of light to look at it?” He knew that electromagnetism theory says that a stationary local maximum is impossible. But if he moved near the wave at the speed of light, he would see a local maximum. He could see the contradiction at 12, 14 years or so - that everything was wrong and that there was something special about the speed of light. Is it a coincidence that he eventually created a special theory of relativity? Already early, he laid some pieces, thinking of fragments. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition. All these things that I will be talking about are at the same time both an accident and not an accident.
How about having big brains? It sounds good. Many of you in this room probably have enough brains to do first-class work. But great work is something besides just brains. Brains are measured differently. In mathematics, theoretical physics, and astrophysics, brains usually correlate to a large extent with the ability to manipulate symbols. And because the usual IQ tests tend to rate them quite high. On the other hand, in other areas it is something else. One day, Bill Pfann came to me - the guy who did the zone melting. He had a vague idea of ​​what he wanted, and there were some kind of equations. It was clear that this man did not particularly know mathematics and could not clearly express thoughts. His task seemed interesting, so I took her home and did some work. I eventually showed him how to use computers so that he could calculate his answers. I gave him the opportunity to calculate. He moved forward without much approval from his department, but in the end he collected all the awards in his field. As soon as he moved, his awkwardness, his tongue-tiedness disappeared, and he became much more productive and in many other ways. Definitely, he began to express his thoughts much better.
And I can also call a man named Clogston. I suppose he is not in this audience. I met him when I was working with a group of John Pierce, and I did not think that he was something. I asked my friends who studied with him if he was the same in graduate school. They replied that "yes." I would have fired this guy, but John Pierce was smart and left him. Clogston eventually made the Clogston cable. After that, he had a steady flow of good ideas. One success brought him confidence and courage.
One of the characteristics of successful scientists is courage. When you become brave and believe that you can do important tasks, then you can. If you think you cannot, you will almost certainly not. Courage is one of the things Shannon had in abundance. You only need to think about its main theorem. He wants to create an encoding method, but he doesn’t know what to do, so he creates random code. Then he gets stuck. And then he asks the impossible question: “What would a random middle code do?” He then proves that the middle code is arbitrarily good, and therefore there must be at least one good code. Who, no matter how the person with infinite courage, would decide to think these thoughts? This is a property of great scientists: they have courage. They go forward under unbelievable circumstances; they think and keep thinking.
Age is another factor that physicists are particularly worried about. They always say that you need to do this when you are young, or you will never do it. Einstein did his work at a very early age, and all the guys from quantum mechanics were disgustingly young when they did their best work. Most mathematicians, theoretical physicists and astrophysicists do what we consider their best work when they are young. Not that they are not doing good work at the old age, but we most of all appreciate what they did early. On the other hand, in music, politics and literature, what we consider the best work is often done at a later age. I do not know where your area is on this scale, but age has an effect.
But let me say why age seems to have such an effect. To begin with, if you do some good work, you will find that you are on all sorts of committees and are no longer able to work. You may find that you are like Brattein when he received the Nobel Prize. On the day when the awards were announced, we all gathered in the Arnold audience. All three winners rose and spoke. Bratteyn almost with tears in his eyes said: “I know about this effect of the Nobel Prize and I will not allow him to influence me. I will remain the good old Walter Brattein. ” "Well," I said to myself, "this is great." But after a few weeks, I saw that it affected him. Now he could only work on big tasks.
When you're famous, it's hard to work on small tasks. That's what ruined Shannon. After information theory, what else can you do? Great scientists often make this mistake. They stop planting small acorns, of which mighty oaks grow. They are trying to do something big. And it doesn't work that way. This is another reason you discover: when you get an early recognition, it sort of sterilizes you. I will give you my favorite statement of many years. The Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, in my opinion, destroyed more good scientists than any other institution created, judging by what they did before they got there and after. Not that they were not good then. But they were great before him, and only just good after.
This raises, maybe a bit out of turn, the question of working conditions. What most people consider better working conditions are not. It is perfectly clear that they are not, because people are often the most productive when working conditions are poor. One of the best periods of the Cambridge Physics Laboratories was when they had almost barracks - they then did the best physics of all time.
I will give a story from my own life. It quickly became clear that Bell Labs would not give me the right amount of programmers to program computers in absolute binary code. It was clear that they would not. But it all worked that way. I could go to the west coast and easily get a job in the airlines, but interesting people were at Bell Labs, and the guys at the airlines were not interesting. I thought for a long time whether I wanted to go or not, and I thought about how to combine the best of two possible worlds. In the end, I said to myself: “Hamming, because you think that cars can do almost everything. Why can't you have them write programs? ”What seemed to me a lack at first made me take up automatic programming very early. What seems to be a disadvantage, when changing a point of view, is often one of your best advantages. But it’s unlikely that you will think like that when you first see the state of affairs and say: “Oooh, I will never get enough programmers, so how will I do some worthwhile programs?”
There are many similar stories. Grace Hopper has similar stories. I think if you look closely, you will see that often great scientists, turning the task a little, turned a disadvantage into an advantage. For example, when many scientists discovered that they could not attend to a task, they finally began to study why they could not. They then turned it differently and said: "Well, of course, because here it is." And get an important result. Therefore, ideal working conditions are something very strange. The conditions you want are not always good for you.
Now about the drive. You can see that most great scientists have a terrific drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had a terrific drive. One day, after three or four years since I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was a bit younger than me. John was a genius, and I was obviously not. Well, I flew into Boda's office and asked: “How can anyone at my age know as much as John Tukey?” Bod leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, smiled a little and said, “You would be surprised, Hamming, how much would you know if you had worked as much for so many years as he did. ” I just crawled out of the office!
Bod said: “Knowledge and productivity are like a cumulative percentage.” To take two people of roughly equal capacity, one of whom works ten percent more than the other, and with time he will be more than twice as productive. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more opportunity. This is very similar to the cumulative percentage. I will not name the bid, but it is very high. To take two people with exactly the same ability, and one who manages to think an hour more for an hour, will eventually be much more productive. I took the note of Boda to heart. I spent a lot more of my time trying to work a little more, and I found that I could actually do more. I do not like to say this in front of my wife, but I sometimes neglected her because I had to work. You must neglect different things if you intend to do what you want. There is no doubt.
In terms of drive, Edison said: "Genius is 99% of sweat and 1% of inspiration." He may have exaggerated, but the idea is that good, steady work will lead you surprisingly far. A steady effort and more cleverly directed labor is what gives the result. Here is the problem: drive, misdirected, doesn't lead you anywhere. I often wondered why so many of my good friends at Bell Labs, who worked so much or more than I, could not show anything. The wrong direction of effort is very serious. Just a little hard work; he must be guided wisely.
There is another trait that I want to talk about; this feature is uncertainty. it took me some time to discover its importance. Most people love to believe that something is true or false. Great scientists tolerate uncertainty very well. They are confident in theory enough to move forward. And they doubt it enough to notice the mistakes and shortcomings, to be able to step forward and create a new theory to replace the incorrect. If you are too sure, you will never notice the flaws; if in doubt, do not move. Need the right balance. But many great scientists know well why their theories are true, and they also know well and do not forget about inconsistencies. Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down all the evidence that seemed to disprove his theory, because otherwise they would have escaped his consciousness. When you discover obvious flaws, you should carefully monitor them and see how they can be explained, or how the theory can be changed to take them into account. Often come across significant additions. Significant additions are rarely made by adding another decimal place. It comes down to emotional commitment. Most great scientists are absolutely committed to their task. Those who do not become committed rarely produce outstanding, first-class work.
Farther. Emotional commitment is not enough. This is clearly a necessary condition. And I think I can tell why. Everyone who has studied creativity, as a result, is forced to say: "Creativity comes from your subconscious". Somehow, unexpectedly, it just appears. Well, we know very little about the subconscious; but you know pretty well that your dreams come from your subconscious too. And you know that your dreams are to a large extent - reworking the experiences of the day. If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day, day after day, your subconscious mind has nothing to do but work on your task. And one morning you wake up and here is the answer. For those who do not become committed to their current task, the subconscious mind is distracted by other things and does not produce a great result. Therefore, you need to manage yourself this way: when you have a really important task, you should not allow anything else to occupy the center of your attention - you should keep your thoughts on the task.You need to starve your subconscious, so that he has to work on your task, so that you can sleep peacefully and get an answer for free in the morning.
Alan Chinovet mentioned that I had dinner at the physicists' table. I had lunch with mathematicians and found that I already knew quite a lot in mathematics; I did not particularly study. The table of physicists was, as he said, fascinatingly interesting, but it seems to me that he exaggerated how much I brought. It was very interesting to listen to William Shockley, Walter Brattein, John Bardeen, John Bertrand Johnson, Kenneth McKay and other people, and I learned a lot. But, unfortunately, people left, because they received Nobel prizes and promotions, and there was garbage. So there was no point in dining with them!
On the other side of the dining room was the chemists table. I worked with one of the guys - Dave McCall; besides, he was courting our secretary at the time. I went and asked if they would mind if I joined them. They couldn't say no, so I started having lunch with them. And I began to ask: “What are important tasks in your area?” And after a week or so: “What important tasks are you working on?” After some time I came and asked: “If what you are doing is not important and if you don’t think it will lead to something important, why are you working on it? ”They didn’t complain about it after that; I had to find someone else to dine with! It was in the spring.
In the fall, Dave McCall stopped me in the corridor and said, “Hamming, your remark has crept under my skin. I thought about it all summer - what important tasks are there in my area. I have not changed the direction of my research, but I think it’s worth it. ” And I answered: “Thank you, Dave,” and went on. I noticed a couple of months later that he was made head of the department. And then he became a member of the National Academy of Engineering. I noticed that he achieved success. I have never heard the names of other guys at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles. They could not ask themselves: “What tasks are important in my field?”
Unless you are working on an important task, it is unlikely that you will do an important job. This is absolutely clear.Great scientists have carefully and carefully thought through a number of important tasks in their field, and they are looking for how to approach them. Let me warn you: an important task must be formulated carefully. Three, in a certain sense, important tasks in physics never worked while I was at Bell Labs. By important I mean a guaranteed Nobel Prize and any amount of money you want to name. We did not work on (1) time travel, (2) teleportation, and (3) antigravity. These tasks were not important, because we have no approach to them. It is not the consequences of the decision that make the task important, but whether you have a reasonable approach. That is what makes the problem important. When I say that most scientists do not work on important tasks, I mean it in that sense. The average scientist, as far as I can observe,spends almost all his time on tasks that he knows are not important, and neither does he think that they will lead to important tasks.
I said earlier about planting acorns so that oaks can grow. You may not always know exactly where to be, but you can work where something can happen. And even if you think that great science is a matter of luck, you can stand on top of a mountain where lightning strikes; you don’t need to hide in a valley where you are safe. But the average scientist almost always does a safe routine work and therefore he (or she) does not give out much. It is so simple. If you want to do a great job, you should definitely work on important tasks and you should have an idea.
In this vein, with some jolts from John Tukey and other people, I finally started what I called the “time of big thoughts”. When I went to dinner at noon Friday, after that I discussed only big thoughts. By big thoughts I mean such: “What will be the role of computers in all AT & T?”, “How will computers change science?” For example, I saw that at that time nine out of ten experiments were done in the laboratory, and one out of ten on the computer . I once made a remark to the vice-presidents that it would be the opposite, that is, nine out of ten experiments will be done on a computer and one in the laboratory. They knew that I was a crazy mathematician and I had no contact with reality. I knew that they were wrong, and time showed that they were wrong, and I was right. They built labs when they were not needed. I have seen,that computers are transforming science because I spent a lot of time wondering what will be the impact of computers on science and how can I change it. I asked myself: “How will Bell Labs change this?” Another time I made a remark to the same address that more than half of the people at Bell Labs would work closely with computers before I left. Well, all of you now have terminals. I thought a lot about where my area is going, where opportunities were, and what important things I can do. I need to move to where there is a chance to do something important.that more than half of the people at Bell Labs will work closely with the computers before I leave. Well, all of you now have terminals. I thought a lot about where my area is going, where opportunities were, and what important things I can do. I need to move to where there is a chance to do something important.that more than half of the people at Bell Labs will work closely with the computers before I leave. Well, all of you now have terminals. I thought a lot about where my area is going, where opportunities were, and what important things I can do. I need to move to where there is a chance to do something important.
Most great scientists know many important tasks. They have about 10-20 important tasks for which they are looking for an approach. And when they see a new idea, you can hear them say: “Oh, this applies to this task.” They drop everything else and get down to business. I can tell a horrible story that was told to me, but I cannot vouch for its veracity. I was sitting at the airport talking to my friend from Los Alamos about how fortunate that the atom fission experiment was conducted in Europe when we did it, because it made us work on the atomic bomb here in the US He replied: “No. At Berkeley, we collected a bunch of data; we didn't get to process them, because we built some more equipment, but if we processed the data, we would open the atom division. ” It was in their hands and they did not do it. They became the second!
Great scientists, when the opportunity arises, rise and rush towards it. They drop everything else. They get rid of other things and move on to the idea, because they have already thought it over. Their minds are ready; they see the opportunity and follow it. Of course, opportunities often do not work, but you don’t need to get into many of them to do a great job. One of the main tricks is to live long!
Another feature - it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or closed. I noticed that if the door to your office is closed, you can do more work from day to day, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later, you somehow do not really know what tasks to work on. All the work you are hard at work with is of mediocre importance. The one who works with the open door is interrupted all the time, but from time to time he also receives guidance on what the world is and what could be important. I cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship and one can say that “a closed door symbolizes a closed mind”. I dont know.But I can say that there is a good correlation between those who work with an open door and those who end up doing important things, although people who work with closed doors often work harder. It seems that they are working a little on those things — not very, but enough to let the glory slip.
I want to talk about one more topic. It is based on a song that I think many of you know: “It's not about what you do, but how you do it.” I will start with my own example. I was led to in the days of absolute binary code to solve on a digital computer a task that could not be solved by the best analog computers. And I got a solution. When I thought carefully, I said to myself: “You know, Hamming, you will have to file a report on this military mission. When you spend a lot of money, you have to account for it and each analog lab will want a report to see if they can find any flaws in it. ” I made the necessary integration in a very lousy way, to say the least, but I got a solution. And I realized that in reality the task was not just to get a solution; she was into show for the first time, and without any doubt, that a digital machine could beat an analog one on its own territory. I reworked the solution method, created a theory, beautiful and elegant, and changed the way we calculated the solution; the results did not differ. The published report was an elegant method, which in subsequent years was known as the “method of integrating Hamming’s differential equations”. It is already outdated, but for a while this method was very good. By slightly changing the task, I did a meaningful job, not a trivial one.as the “method of integrating Hamming’s differential equations”. It is already outdated, but for a while this method was very good. By slightly changing the task, I did a meaningful job, not a trivial one.as the “method of integrating Hamming’s differential equations”. It is already outdated, but for a while this method was very good. By slightly changing the task, I did a meaningful job, not a trivial one.
In the same way, using a car in the attic in the early days, I solved the problem after task; quite a few were successful and there were several setbacks. One Friday, having completed the task, I went home, and, strangely, I was not happy; I was depressed. I had a life that consisted of a long series of tasks - task after task, task after task. After some reflection, I decided: “No, I have to be in the mass production of a variable product. I have to deal with all the tasks of the next year, and not just the one that is now before me. ” By changing the question, I still got the same or better results, but I changed the case and did a meaningful job. I came up with a big task: how do I beat the cars and complete all the tasks of the next year, when I don’t know what they will be? How do I prepare for this? How do I accomplish this particular taskto be on top? How do I obey Newton's rule? He said: "If I saw farther than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants." These days we stand on the feet of each other!
You should do your job so that others can build on it, so that they say: "Yes, I stood on the shoulders of such and such, and I saw further." The essence of science is cumulative. By slightly changing the task, you can often do a great job, and not just a good job. Instead of going to individual tasks, I decided that I would never deal with individual problems anymore, if not as classes of problems.
If you are good at math, you know that trying to summarize often means that the solution is simple. Often, stopping and saying: “He wants to solve the problem, but it is characteristic of this and that. I can approach the whole class of problems with a more excellent method, and not such a specific one, because earlier I was immersed in unnecessary details. ” Abstraction often simplifies matters. Since then, I have postponed the methods and prepared for future tasks.
Concluding this part, I remind you: a bad worker who blames his tools; A good person takes up the job with what he has and gets the best solution he can. And I say that by changing the task, looking at things differently, you can make a significant difference in your productivity, because you can either work so that people can build on what you have done, or so that the next person in fact, you had to repeat what you did again. This applies not only to the work itself, but also to how you compile the report, how you write the publication. This is all relation as a whole. A broad, general work is as easy to do as a very narrow one. And it is much more satisfying!
I now came to a very tasteless topic. It is not enough to do the work;need to sell it. “Selling” for a scientist is a very awkward task. It's disgusting; you don't have to do this. The world, in theory, must wait, and when you do something great, they must rush and clap. But the fact is that everyone is busy with their own work. You must present the work so that they postpone their studies, see what you have done, read, come back and say: "Yes, that was good." I suggest you, when you turn the pages of the magazine, to wonder why you are reading some articles, but not others. You'd better write your report so that when it is published in the Physical Review or any other publication of any kind, and when readers scroll through, they will not scroll through your pages, but they will stop and read your work. If they do not stop and do not read it, you will not receive recognition.
There are three things you must do to sell. You have to write clearly and well for people to read; you must learn to give rather formal lectures; and you must learn to give informal lectures. We have a lot of so-called "unknown scientists." At the conference, they are silent, and three weeks after the decision is made, they submit a report where they write why they should do so. Well, too late. They don’t stand up right in the middle of a hot conference, in the middle of a discussion, and don’t say: “We should do it for such and such reasons.” You should master this form of communication as well as prepared speeches.
When I first started, I practically became physically ill when I was giving lectures, and I was very, very nervous. I realized that I had to either learn how to lecture smoothly, or I, in fact, would ruin my career. When IBM first asked me to give a lecture in New York, I decided that I would give a very good lecture. The lecture they want; not technical, but wide. And at the end, if she likes it, I will quietly say: “At any moment, whenever you want, I will come and give you a lecture.” As a result, I received a lot of practice, giving lectures for limited audiences, and stopped being afraid.
I could also learn which methods were effective and which were not. Attending meetings, I have already studied why some works are memorized, and most are not. A technical person wants to give a very limited technical lecture. As a rule, the audience wants a broad lecture of a general nature and wants a much more general overview and introduction than the speaker wants to give. As a result, many lectures are ineffective. The lecturer calls the topic and suddenly dives into the details. Few people can keep track. You must draw a big picture to explain why this is important, and then slowly expand the sketch of what has been done. Then more people will say: “Yes, Joe did it” or “Mary did that, I really see what it is about. Yes, Mary gave a really good lecture, I understand what she did. ” As a rule, people give a very limited, safe lecture;this is usually ineffective. In addition, many lectures are full of information. Therefore, I will say that this idea of ​​selling is obvious.
Let me summarize. You have to work on important tasks. I deny that all this is just luck, but I admit that there is a good amount of luck. I subscribe to the words of Pasteur: "Good luck favors the prepared mind." I really like the way I did. For many years on Fridays only big thoughts, which meant that I spent 10% of my time trying to solve big problems in my field; that is, what was important and what was not. In the early days I discovered that I used to believe in one thing, and nevertheless went the other way all week. It was somehow stupid. If I truly believe that the matter is there, why do I step here? I have to either change my goal or change what I do. Therefore, I changed what I was doing and walked in the direction I considered important. It is so easy.
Here you can say that you do not decide what you should work on. Well, when you first start, you may not decide. But as soon as you become a little successful, more people start asking for results than you can give out, and you have little choice, albeit incomplete. I will tell a story about this; she is about training your boss. I had a boss named Schelkunov; he is still a very good friend of mine. Some military man came to me and demanded some decisions by Friday. Well, I have already diverted my computing resources to data processing for a group of scientists; I was knee-deep in short, small, important tasks. This military man wanted me to solve his task by the end of Friday's day. I said, "No, I will give it to you on Monday. I can work on it at the weekend. I will not do it now. ” He goes to my boss,Schelkunov, and Schelkunov says: “You must do this for him; he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "Schelkunov says: “You must do this for him; he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "Schelkunov says: “You must do this for him; he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "“You have to do it for him; he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "“You have to do it for him; he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "what should i I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "what should i I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "how this guy will come through that door. ” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "how this guy will come through that door. ” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "“Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "“Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "
One lesson was enough to teach my boss why I don’t want to do big tasks that crowd out research computing, and why it was justified that I didn’t do the urgent work that takes up all the computing resources. I instead wanted to use power to solve a large number of small tasks. Again, in the early days I was limited in computing power, and in my area it was believed that "machine maths do not need anything." But I needed more machine resources. Every time I had to answer to some scientist from some other field: “No, I can't; I have no machine resources. ” He complained. I replied: "Go tell your vice president that Hamming needs more computing resources." After a while I sawthat up there many people said to my vice president: “Your man needs more computational resources.” I got them!
I also did one more thing. When I borrowed some small programming resources that we had at the dawn of computers, I said: “Our programmers do not get the recognition they deserve. When you publish your work, thank this programmer, or you will no longer receive my help. That programmer should be thanked by name; she worked hard. ” I waited a couple of years, and then looked through the articles in the BSTJ (Bell System Technical Journal) for a year, and thought what percentage thanked some programmer. I carried it to the boss and said: “That's what central role computing systems play in Bell Labs; if BSTJ is important, that’s how important computing systems are. ” He had to surrender. You can train your bosses. This is hard work. In this lecture, I look only from the bottom up; I do not look down.But I am telling you how you can get what you want, despite top management. You have to sell your ideas there too.
Well, now I come to the question "Is it worth the effort to be a great scientist?". To answer this, you need to ask people. When you go through the gates of their modesty, most people will say, “Yes, doing first-class work and knowing this is as good as wine, women, and a song put together.” And if it’s a woman, she’s going to say, “Yes, it’s as good as wine, men, and a song put together.” And if you look at the bosses, they drop in or ask for reports to participate in the moments of discovery. They are always on the way. So it is obvious that those who have already done this want to do it again. But this is a limited sample. I never dared to ask those who did not do the great work, what they felt about everything. This is a biased sample, but I still think it's worth the effort. I think,which is definitely worth trying and doing first-class work, because, in truth, the value is greater in the fight than in the result. Efforts to make something of themselves seem valuable in their own right. Success or fame is a kind of dividend, in my opinion.
I told you how to do it. It's so easy, so why do so many people with all their talents fail? For example, in my opinion, today in the mathematical department of Bell Labs there are enough more capable and gifted people than I, but they have not given out much. Some of them gave out more than me; Shannon did more of me, and some others did a lot, but I was more productive than a large number of other guys who were better gifted. Why is that?What happened to them? Why did so many people who gave high hopes fail?
Well, one of the reasons is drive and commitment. People who take on great work with less ability, but who are committed to it, do more than those who have tremendous skills and who only do superficial work, who work during the day, then go home and do other things, and return to work only the next day. They do not have the deep commitment that is needed for truly top-notch work. They give out a lot of good work, but we are talking about first-class work. There is a difference. Practical, talented people almost always give out a good job. We are talking about outstanding work; one that gets the Nobel Prize and deserves recognition.
The second thing, I think, is the problem of personality flaws. I will give an example of a guy I met in Irvine. He was the head of the computer center and he was on temporary assignment as a special assistant to the president of the university. It was clear that he had a job with a great future. Once he brought me to his office and showed me his method of processing letters and how he took care of his correspondence. He noted how ineffective the secretary was. He kept all his letters laid out around; he knew where everything was. And he could write a letter in his word processor. He bragged about how amazing it was, and how he could do a lot more work without the intervention of the secretary. Well, I talked to the secretary. The secretary said: “Of course, I cannot help him; I do not receive his letters. He does not give me login details. I dont know,where and what he lays out. Of course, I can't help him. ” I went back to him and said: “Look, if you do everything alone by the current method, you can only advance so much and no further. If you learn to work with the system, you can go as far as the system can promote you. ” And he never advanced further. He had a personal flaw - the desire for total control, and he did not want to understand that the support of the system was needed.He had a personal flaw - the desire for total control, and he did not want to understand that the support of the system was needed.He had a personal flaw - the desire for total control, and he did not want to understand that the support of the system was needed.
It happens again and again; good scientists are struggling with the system, instead of learning how to work with it and use the benefits it gives. It gives a lot, if you learn how to use it. It takes patience, but you can learn to use the system fairly well, and you can learn to bypass it. In the end, if you need the answer “No”, you just go to the boss and easily get “No”. If you want to do something, do not ask, do it. Provide him a fait accompli. Don't give him a chance to say no to you. But if you want “No,” it’s easy to get.
Another personality flaw is the statement of the ego. I will talk about my own experience. I came from Los Alamos and in the early days I used a computer in New York at Madison Avenue, where we just rented time. I was still wearing Western clothes: big slant pockets, bolos and all that. I noticed that I did not receive the same good service as other people. I began to follow. I come and wait for my turn, and I feel that the attitude towards me is not impartial. I asked myself: “Why? None of IBM's vice-presidents said "Show Hamming where the crabs overwinter." This was done by the secretaries. When a window appears, they find someone to give it to, but they find someone else. Why?I didn’t treat them badly. ” The answer was that I did not dress the way they felt that a person should dress in that situation. It all boiled down to this - I dressed in the wrong way. I had to decide whether to assert my ego and dress, as I want it to constantly take energy away from my professional life, or to pretend to be appropriate. I decided to pretend to be appropriate. I immediately began to receive much better service. And now, as an old bright character, I get better service than other people.
You must dress accordingly to the expectations of the audience you are referring to. If I'm going to speak at the MIT computer center, I will put on a bolo and an old corduroy jacket or something else. I understand enough to not allow my clothes, my appearance, my manners to prevent what is important to me. Many scholars feel that they need to assert their ego and act in their own way. They have to do it this way or the other, and they constantly pay for it.
John Tukey almost always dressed very casually. He came to an important office and it took a long time for the other person to understand that he was a first-class person and better to listen to him. John spent a lot of time overcoming this rejection. This is wasted power! I am not saying that you must fit the environment; I say that the appearance of compliance helps a lot. If you assert your ego in one way or another - “this will be in my opinion” - you will pay for your entire professional career. And this, throughout life, will be a huge unnecessary problem.
Having taken the trouble to tell jokes and be a little friendly with the secretaries, I received excellent help from them. For example, once for some stupid reason, all the copying resources on Murray Hill turned out to be occupied. Do not ask me why, but it just happened. I had to do something. My secretary called someone in Holmdel, jumped into the company car, spent an hour on the road and copied the material, and then returned. It was a reward for making efforts to encourage her, tell jokes to her and generally be friendly; it was such a small extra effort that paid off for me later. Realizing that you must use the system, and learning how to make the system do your work, you learn to change the system to fit your needs. Or you can constantly fight with it,lead a small undeclared war all his life.
And I think that John Tukey paid a terrible price without any need. In any case, he was a genius, but I think it would be much better and much easier if he wanted to adjust a little, instead of asserting the ego. He always dresses as he wants. And this concerns not only clothes, but thousands of other things; people continue to struggle with the system. But not that you sometimes should not do it!
When they moved the library from the middle of Murray Hill to the outskirts, a friend of mine applied for a bicycle. Well, the organization was not stupid. They waited a bit and sent him a map of the area with the question: "Could you please indicate on this map which way you are likely to travel so that we can get insurance for you." A few more weeks went by; they asked: "Where will you keep your bike and how will it be locked so that we can do this and that." He eventually realized that he would, of course, be bureaucratized to death, so he succumbed. He became president of Bell Laboratories.
Barney Oliver was a good man. He once wrote a letter to IEEE. At that time, the standard shelf height at Bell Labs was this and that, and the height of the IEEE Proceedings publication was greater. The standard height of the shelves could not be changed, so he wrote to a person at IEEE publishing a letter like: “There are so many IEEE members at Bell Labs and the standard height of the shelves is this, so the size of the journal should be changed. He sent it signed by his boss. He received a copy with a signature, but he still does not know whether the original was sent or not. I am not saying that efforts should not be made to reform. I say that according to my observations of capable people, they do not allow themselves to indulge in this kind of struggle. They play it a little, drop it, and do their work.
Many second-rate guys get stuck in some small nonsense of the system and go to war. They spend their energy on a stupid project. Here you can tell me that someone has to change the system. I agree.Someone must. But who do you want to be? A person who changes the system, or a person who makes a first-class science? Which of these people do you want to be? When you are struggling with the system, be aware of what you are doing, how far you want to go for fun, and how much energy you spend on fighting the system. My advice is to leave it to someone else so that you can become a first-class scientist. Very few of you can simultaneously reform the system and become a first-class scientist.
On the other hand, we cannot always give in. It happens that a certain share of resistance is needed. I observe that almost all scientists enjoy the pleasure of a certain amount of picking the system simply out of love for it. It boils down to, in fact, that you cannot be original in one area without originality in other areas. Originality means different from others. You cannot be an original scientist without any other original characteristics. But many scientists allow their vagaries in other things to force themselves to pay a much higher price than necessary for satisfying the ego. I am not against the approval of the ego at all; I am against some.
Another flaw is anger. Often, the scientist becomes angry, and so it is impossible to approach things. Laughter - yes, anger - no. Anger is not directed there. You have to cooperate, not fight the system all the time.
Another thing - you should look at the positive side of things instead of the negative. I have already cited a few, and one can give even more examples of how, in a particular situation, changing my view, I turned what was clearly a disadvantage into an advantage. I will give one more example. I am a narcissist; there is no doubt. I knew that many people who took a sabbatical to write a book did not complete it on time. Therefore, before I went on vacation, I told all my friends that the book would be ready! Of course, I would complete it - I would be ashamed to return without it! I used my ego to make me act as I wanted. I boasted about being forced to do it. I have found many times that, being in the position of a rat driven into a corner, I am surprisingly capable. I found that when I say "Oh, yes,I will give you a solution by Tuesday, without any idea how to do it, it works. By Sunday evening, I thought very hard about how to do it by Tuesday.
I often put my pride in jeopardy and sometimes I failed, but, as I said, as a rat cornered, I was surprised at how often I did a good job. I think you need to learn how to use yourself. I think you need to know how to look at the situation from the other side, which will increase the chances of success.
Here it must be said that self-deception is very, very peculiar to people. There are plenty of ways to distort the situation and deceive yourself. When you ask "why you did not do this and that," the person has a thousand excuses. If you look at the history of science, there are usually ten ready-made people, and we reward the person who was first. The other nine say, "Well, I had an idea, but I did it, and so on and so forth." A lot of excuses. Why were you not the first? Why not done right? Do not try on excuses. Do not be fooled. You can tell other people any excuses. I'm not against.But in front of you, try to be honest.
If you really want to be a first-class scholar, you need to know yourself, your weaknesses, your strengths, and your bad weaknesses, like my vanity. How can you turn a disadvantage into an advantage? How can you change the situation when you do not have enough personnel to move somewhere, when exactly this is what you need? I repeat once again what I saw when studying history, that a successful scientist changed his point of view and what was a disadvantage became an advantage.
In general, I argue that here are some reasons why so many people who can reach greatness do not succeed: they do not work on important tasks; they do not become emotionally involved; they are not trying to turn a difficult situation into something else that is easily solved, but still important; and they find excuses for not doing something. They keep saying that this is a matter of luck. I told you how easy it is; Moreover, I told you how to make a difference. So go and become great scientists!
( The end of the formal part of the lecture ).
Alan Chinowett : It was 50 minutes of concentrated wisdom and observation gathered over a fantastic career; I lost track of the observations that hit the mark. Some of them are very, very timely. One of them is a plea for more computer power; This morning I have heard nothing but this from several people - again and again. So that was exactly the point today, although 20-30 years have passed since you made such comments, Dick. I see a variety of lessons that we can all learn from your lecture. For example, I hope that when I walk through the corridors in the future, I don’t see so many closed doors in Bellcore. This observation seemed to me very intriguing.
Thank you so much, Dick, these were wonderful memories. I now open time for questions. I’m sure many would like to respond to some of the ideas that Dick expressed.
Hamming: First let me answer Alan about computers. I had computers in the research department and for ten years I repeated to my management: “Remove this! & @ #% Machine from the research department. We are forced to solve problems all the time. We cannot conduct research work because we are too busy with the support and operation of computers. ” As a result, the message reached. They removed the cars from the research department somewhere else. I became, at least, persona non grata, and I was surprised that people did not kick me for taking away their favorite toy from everyone. I went to Ed Davis's office and said, “Look, Ed, you have to give your researchers a car. If you give them a big car, we’ll go back to the same problem that was when we were so busy with cars that we couldn’t think.Give them the smallest car you can, because they are very capable people. They will learn to do work on a small machine instead of a large one. ” This is how UNIX appeared. We gave them a rather small car and they decided to make it do big things. They had to create a system for this. It's called UNIX!
Alan Chinovet : I just have to answer that. In our current environment, Dick, we struggle with some bureaucracy attributed to or demanded by regulators, and there is one phrase that was expressed by one angry assistant vice-president and I used again and again. He growled that "Unix was never the goal!"
Question : What about personal stress? Does it affect?
Hamming: Yes, it does. If you are not involved emotionally, it does not. I had ulcers in the initial form for almost all the years working at Bell Labs. I have since moved to the naval school and relaxed a bit, and now my health is much better. But if you want to be a great scientist, you have to put up with stress. You can lead a pleasant life; you can be either a “good guy” or a great scholar. But “the good guys are the last to come,” as Leo Duroche said. If you want to lead a pleasant happy life with a lot of entertainment and other things, then lead a pleasant life.
Question: With a note of courage no one can argue; but those of us who have gray hair, or who are quite authoritative, do not have to worry too much. But among young people these days, I feel real anxiety about taking risks in a highly competitive environment. Do you have any wise words about this?
Hamming: I will remember Ed Davis again. Ed Davis thought about the total loss of courage in our society. I think we went through different periods. After going through the war, coming out of Los Alamos, where we created the bomb, a group of people with powerful character came from the work on radars and other things, into the mathematical departments and research. They just saw how things are done. They had just won the war, which was fantastic. Our courage had reasons, and therefore we did a lot. I can not arrange the same situation to repeat it. I cannot blame the current generation for the lack of courage, although I agree with what you are saying. I just can't blame someone for that. It does not seem to me that they have a desire for greatness; they have no boldness to that. But we had it, because we were in favorable circumstances;we came out of a tremendously successful war. In this war things looked very, very bad; it was a very desperate struggle, as you well know. And success, I think, gave us courage and self-confidence; that is why from the late forties and in the fifties you see tremendous productivity in laboratories. Because many of us used to have to learn things that we didn’t want to learn, and we had to keep the door open — and then we could use what we learned. It is true and I can do nothing about it; I also can not blame the current generation. This is just a fact.that is why from the late forties and in the fifties you see tremendous productivity in laboratories. Because many of us used to have to learn things that we didn’t want to learn, and we had to keep the door open — and then we could use what we learned. It is true and I can do nothing about it; I also can not blame the current generation. This is just a fact.that is why from the late forties and in the fifties you see tremendous productivity in laboratories. Because many of us used to have to learn things that we didn’t want to learn, and we had to keep the door open — and then we could use what we learned. It is true and I can do nothing about it; I also can not blame the current generation. This is just a fact.
Question : Is there something that management can or should do?
Hamming : Management can do very little. If you want to talk about research management, this is a completely different topic. It will take another hour. This lecture is about how an individual does a very successful research job despite the actions of management or any other confrontation. And how do you do it? So, as people who, as I saw, did it. This is all so simple and so difficult.
Question : Is Brainsturm a daily process?
HammingA: It used to be a very popular thing, but it does not seem to justify itself. For myself, I find it desirable to talk with other people; but a brainstorming session rarely gives anything. I go to someone to talk and say: “Look, I think there is something here. That's what I think, I see ... "And we begin to discuss. But at the same time you want to talk with capable people. To give another analogy, you know the idea of ​​"critical mass." If you have enough, then you have a critical mass. There is also an idea that I call "sound absorbers." When you have too many sound absorbers, you give out ideas, and they just say "yes, yes, yes." You want a critical mass in action; “Yes, it reminds me of this and that” or “Have you thought about this?”. When you communicate with other people,you want to get rid of these sound absorbers, which are nice people, but just answer "Oh, yes." You want to find people who will immediately stimulate you.
For example, you could not talk to John Pierce and not be stimulated. There were other people with whom I spoke. For example, Ed Gilbert; I regularly went to his office and asked him questions, listened, and came back stimulated. I carefully chose people who were brainstorming or not engaged, because sound absorbers are a curse. They are just "good guys"; they fill the space and contribute nothing; only absorb ideas, and new ideas just die, instead of responding further. Yes, I find it necessary to talk with people. I think people with closed doors do not do this, so they don’t manage to hone their ideas, like “Have you ever noticed anything here?”. I never knew anything about something - I can go and see. Someone points the way. When I visit there, I already find several bookswhich I have to read when I'm at home. I talk to people and ask questions when I think they can answer and give hints that I don’t know about. I go out and look!
Question : How did you divide your time between reading, writing, and research work itself?
Hamming : From the first day I thought that I should spend at least as much time on polishing and presenting as on the research itself. Now at least 50% of the time should go to the presentation. This is a big, big number.
Question : How much effort should go to work in the library?
HammingA: It depends on the area. I will say this about this. There was a guy at Bell Labs. Very, very smart guy. He was always in the library, he read everything. If you wanted links, you went to him and he gave you all sorts of different links. But in the process of the formation of these theories, I formed a statement: in the long run, not a single effect will be named after him. He has already left Bell Labs and is an adjunct professor. He was very valuable; it is certain. He wrote some very good articles in the Physical Review; but no effect was named after him because he read too much. If you read all the time what other people have done, you will think as they thought. If you want to think new thoughts, different thoughts, then do what many creative people do:formulate the task clearly enough and refuse to look at any answers until you have thoroughly thought out the task - how will you solve it, how can you change it a little to put it correctly. So yes, you need to be aware. You need to be in the know more to find out what problems there are, than to read to find solutions. Reading to find solutions does not seem to be the path to meaningful research. Therefore, I will give two answers. You read; but it does not matter how much, but how you read.Therefore, I will give two answers. You read; but it does not matter how much, but how you read.Therefore, I will give two answers. You read; but it does not matter how much, but how you read.
Question : How to make your name something called?
Hamming : Doing great work. I will tell you the story of the Hamming window. I strained Tukey quite a few times, and I received a call from him from Princeton. He wrote about the spectral power density and asked me if I would mind if he called a certain window "Hamming window". And I answered him: “Well, John, you know perfectly well that I did only a small part of the work, but you also did a lot.” He replied: “Yes, Hamming, but you contributed a lot of little things. You deserve some recognition. ” Therefore, he called it the Hamming window. Here let me continue. I often pushed John about true greatness. I said that true greatness is when your name as ampere, watt and fourier is when it is written with a small letter. So the Hamming window appeared.
Question : Dick, would you comment on the relative effectiveness of lecturing, writing publications, and books?
HammingA: In the short term, publications are very important if you want to stimulate someone tomorrow. If you want long-term recognition, writing books seems to me a more meaningful contribution, because most of us need to orient ourselves. In our days of almost infinite knowledge, we need to navigate to find a way. I will tell you what infinite knowledge is. From the time of Newton to our days, scientific knowledge doubles every 17 years or so. And we are coping with this specialization. In the next 340 years, at this rate, there will be 20 doublings, that is, a million. There will be a million specializations in every existing area. That won't do. The growth of knowledge will choke until we have other tools. I believe that books that are trying to digest, coordinate, get rid of repetitions,get rid of less fruitful methods and clearly present the main ideas that are known now will be appreciated by future generations. Public lectures are needed, private lectures are needed, publications are needed. But I tend to think that in the long run, books that miss what is not important are more important than books that tell you everything, because you do not want to know everything. "I don't want to know so much about penguins." You want to know only the essence."I don't want to know so much about penguins." You want to know only the essence."I don't want to know so much about penguins." You want to know only the essence.
Question : You mentioned the problem of the Nobel Prize and what subsequently becomes with some people. Is this not a kind of more general problem of fame? What can be done here?
Hamming: You can do, for example, this. Approximately every seven years significantly, if not completely, change the area of ​​their work. For example, I switched from computational mathematics to hardware, from there to software, and so on, because there is a tendency to spend my ideas. When you come to a new area, you have to start over again, like a newborn. You are no longer a big important person and you can start over and you can start planting acorns that will become huge oaks. Shannon, I believe, ruined himself. When he left Bell Labs, I said: "This is the end of Shannon's scientific career." I got a lot of fire from my friends, who said that Shannon was as smart as ever. I replied: "Yes, he will be just as smart, but this is the end of his scientific career," and I really think that was so.
You must change. You get tired over time; you spend your originality in one area. You need to find something nearby. I do not say that you switch from music to theoretical physics, and there to English literature; I mean that in your field you should switch between areas so as not to stagnate. It is impossible to force a switch every seven years, but if it were possible, I would make it a condition for research work - so that you change your field of study every seven or ten years; management has the power to make you change. I would insist on change, because this is serious. After all, what happens to people - they turn out some method and continue to use it. They are walking in the direction that was right then, but the world is changing. Already have a new direction,but the old men are still striding that old side.
You need to be in a new area to get new points of view, and better before you spend all the old ones. You can work on it, but it takes effort and energy. It takes courage to say: "Yes, I will give up my great reputation." For example, when error correction codes were issued, I said, "Hamming, now you will try to do something other than rest in this area." I deliberately refused to continue working in this area. I did not even read the publication to force myself to do something else. I controlled myself - which is what I teach in this entire lecture. Knowing many of my faults, I control myself. I have many shortcomings, so I have a lot of problems - that is, opportunities for management.
Question : How do you compare research and management?
Hamming: If you want to be a great explorer, you will not become them, being the president of the company. Another thing, if you want to be president of the company. I do not mind being a company president. I just do not want. I think Ian Ross does a good job as president of Bell Labs. I'm not against it; but you must clearly understand what you want. Even when you are young, you may want to be a great scientist, but after living more, you can change your mind. For example, I once went to my boss, Boda, and asked: “Why did you even become head of the department? Why didn't you just stay a good scientist? ”He replied:“ Hamming, I had a vision of what mathematics should be at Bell Laboratories. And I understood that for this vision to come true, I had to do it; I was supposed to be the head of the department. ” When you can single-handedly embody thatwhatever you want, then you should do it. Once your vision of what you think should be done, more than what you can do alone, you need to move into management. And the bigger the vision, the further you need to go into management. If you have a vision of what the whole lab or the whole Bell System should be, you have to go there to do it. You cannot do this easily from below.You cannot do this easily from below.You cannot do this easily from below.
It depends on your goals and desires. And as they change in your life, you must be ready to change. I chose to avoid management because I preferred to do what I can do alone. But this is a choice that I made, and it is subjective. Everyone has the right to their own choice. Let your mind be open. But when you choose the path, for the sake of all that is holy, be aware of what you have done and what you have decided. Do not try to do both.
Question : How important are your own expectations for yourself or how important is it to be surrounded by people who expect excellent work from you?
Hamming : At Bell Labs, everyone was expecting a good job from me. It helped a lot. Everyone is waiting for you to do a good job, so you do it. I think it is very valuable to have around top-notch people. I sought out the best people. As soon as the table of physicists in the dining room lost the best people, I left. As soon as I saw that the same thing happened with the chemists' table, I left. I tried to be with people with great abilities so that I could learn from them, with people who expected excellent results from me. Thoughtfully controlling myself, I think I would have achieved much better than if I had left the matter alone.
Question: At the beginning of the conversation you have lowered the role of luck but you also seem to have missed the circumstances that led you to Los Alamos, Chicago, Bell Laboratories.
Hamming: There was some luck. On the other hand, I do not know the alternative branches of development. Until you can say that the other branches would not be equally or more successful, I can not say. Is the particular thing you are doing good luck? For example, when I met Feynman in Los Alamos, I knew that he would receive the Nobel Prize. I did not know why. But I knew very well that he would do an excellent job. No matter what directions the future would have appeared, this person would have done an excellent job. And for sure - he did an excellent job. It is not that you did a little excellent work in specific circumstances, and it was good luck; there are many opportunities sooner or later. There is a whole tub full of possibilities, from which, if you are in such a situation, you pull one and you are good at one instead of something else. There is an element of luck. Yes and no. ; . . , . , , .
Go and do a great job!
* . « », , , , , , . : Hamming: You and Your Research . « Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn ».
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Dr. Richard Hamming, professor at the Monterey Maritime School in California and retired scientist at Bell Labs, gave a very interesting and challenging lecture “You and Your Research” to a crowded audience of about 200 Bellcore employees and guests at the Bell Communications Colloquium seminar on March 7, 1986. Research. This lecture describes Hamming's observations in part of the question “Why do so few scientists make a significant contribution to science and so many are forgotten in the long run?”. During his more than forty-year career, whose thirty years were spent at Bell Laboratories, he made a series of direct observations, asked scientists very sharp questions about what, how, whence, why they did and what they did, studied the lives of great scientists and great achievements, and led introspection and studied theories of creativity. This lecture is about what he learned about the properties of individual scientists, their abilities, traits, work habits, attitude and philosophy.
Presentation by Dr. Richard Hamming
Richard Hamming was represented by Alan Chinovet, Vice President of Applied Research at Bell Communications Research.
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Greetings, colleagues, and also many of our former colleagues from Bell Labs, who, as I understand it, are with us today at this very appropriate event. It is with great pleasure that I present to you my old friend and long-time colleague - Richard Hamming, or Dick Hamming, as he has always been known to all of us.
Dick is one of the classics of mathematics and computer science, of which, I am sure, the audience does not need to be reminded. He received his early education at the universities of Chicago and Nebraska, and his doctoral degree in Illinois; then he joined the Los Alamos project during the war. Then, in 1946, he came to Bell Labs. There I met him when I joined their organization of research in the field of physics. In those days, we, the group of physicists, had the habit of dining together, and for some reason this strange math guy was always glad to join us. We were always pleased with his presence, because he brought so many original ideas and views. I can assure you that those meals stimulated.
I think the last time I met him - it was about ten years ago - at a rather curious small conference in Dublin, where we both spoke. As always, he was amazingly interesting. Just as an example of daring thoughts that he gives out, I remember how he said: “There are wavelengths that people cannot see, sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think.” . Well, with Dick Hamming, we don't need a computer. I think we got into a very exciting lecture.
Lecture "You and Your Research" by Dr. Richard Hamming
I am pleased to be here. I doubt that I can match this view. My lecture is called "You and Your Research." She is not about research management; it is about how you personally conduct your work. I could give a lecture on a different topic, but I will talk about you. I am not talking about ordinary, unremarkable work; I'm talking about a great job. To make it clear what I call a great work, I will sometimes say “work for the Nobel Prize”. She doesn't have to get the Nobel Prize, but I mean things that we think are great. The theory of relativity, if you like, Shannon's theory of information, any other outstanding theories - I am talking about such things.
How did I start learning this? In Los Alamos, they took me to support the computers that other people put in so that scientists and physicists could return to their work. I saw that I was just a boy. Although physically I was the same, they were different. And I, frankly, envied. I wanted to know why they were so different from me. I saw Feynman closely. I saw Fermi and Teller. I saw Oppenheimer. I saw Hans Bethe - he was my boss. I saw quite capable people. It became very interesting to me, what is the difference between people who do meaningful things and people who do not do them.
When I came to Bell Labs, I came to a very productive department. Bod was the head of the department at the time; Shannon and others were there. I continued to study the questions “Why?” And “What is the difference?”. I continued reading biographies and autobiographies, asking people questions like "How did you come to do this?". I tried to discover what the differences are. I will tell about them.
Why is this lecture important? I think it is important, because each of you has only one life. Even if you believe in reincarnation, it will not help you from life to life! Why don't you do meaningful things in this life, whatever you think are meaningful? I will not say what is meaningful. You know what I mean. I will talk mainly about science, because this is what I studied. But much of what I saw applies to other areas. Outstanding work is characterized by almost the same in most areas, I'm just talking about science.
To reach you personally, I have to speak in the first person. I have to make you discard modesty and say to yourself: “Yes, I want to do first-class work.” Our society disapproves of those who intend to do a really good job. "You should not. Good luck should fall on you and you will do something great by chance. " Well, this is very stupid. I say: why don't you intend to do something meaningful. You do not have to tell other people about it. But shouldn't you say to yourself: “Yes, I want to do something meaningful”?
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Let me start, not logically, but psychologically. The big objection that I see is the opinion that great science is being done at random. "This is all a matter of chance." But look at Einstein. Notice how many different good things he did. Was it all luck? Is it too much? Look at Shannon. He did not only information theory. A few years before, he had done some other good things, some of which were still locked up under the lock of cryptography. He did a lot of good things.
You see again and again that good people do more than one good thing in life. Sometimes a person does just one thing in his entire life, and we will talk about it later. But very often there is a repetition. I contend that luck does not explain everything. And I will quote Pasteur, who said: "Good luck favors the prepared mind." It expresses the way I think. Indeed, there is an element of luck, and at the same time it is not. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, this is good luck. What you do is luck; but the fact that you do something is not.
For example, when I came to Bell Labs, for some time I shared an office with Shannon. Just when he was engaged in information theory, I was engaged in coding theory. Suspiciously, that we two were doing this in the same place at the same time — it was in the air. And you can say that it was an accident. On the other hand, you can say: “But why among all the people at Bell Labs at that time there were those two who did this?” Yes, in part this is luck, and partly - a prepared mind. On the "part" I will talk. So, although I’m going back to luck a few more times, I want to get rid of the idea that luck is the only factor that determines whether you will do a great job or not. I contend that you have some, albeit incomplete, control over this. And I will quote Newton on this subject. Newton said: "If others thought as tensely as I did, they would get similar results."
One of the characteristics that many people have, including great scientists, is that when they were young, they usually had independent thoughts and the courage to practice them. For example, Einstein, about 12 or 14 years old, asked himself the question: “What would a wave of light look like if I moved at the speed of light to look at it?” He knew that electromagnetism theory says that a stationary local maximum is impossible. But if he moved near the wave at the speed of light, he would see a local maximum. He could see the contradiction at 12, 14 years or so - that everything was wrong and that there was something special about the speed of light. Is it a coincidence that he eventually created a special theory of relativity? Already early, he laid some pieces, thinking of fragments. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition. All these things that I will be talking about are at the same time both an accident and not an accident.
How about having big brains? It sounds good. Many of you in this room probably have enough brains to do first-class work. But great work is something besides just brains. Brains are measured differently. In mathematics, theoretical physics, and astrophysics, brains usually correlate to a large extent with the ability to manipulate symbols. And because the usual IQ tests tend to rate them quite high. On the other hand, in other areas it is something else. One day, Bill Pfann came to me - the guy who did the zone melting. He had a vague idea of ​​what he wanted, and there were some kind of equations. It was clear that this man did not particularly know mathematics and could not clearly express thoughts. His task seemed interesting, so I took her home and did some work. I eventually showed him how to use computers so that he could calculate his answers. I gave him the opportunity to calculate. He moved forward without much approval from his department, but in the end he collected all the awards in his field. As soon as he moved, his awkwardness, his tongue-tiedness disappeared, and he became much more productive and in many other ways. Definitely, he began to express his thoughts much better.
And I can also call a man named Clogston. I suppose he is not in this audience. I met him when I was working with a group of John Pierce, and I did not think that he was something. I asked my friends who studied with him if he was the same in graduate school. They replied that "yes." I would have fired this guy, but John Pierce was smart and left him. Clogston eventually made the Clogston cable. After that, he had a steady flow of good ideas. One success brought him confidence and courage.
One of the characteristics of successful scientists is courage. When you become brave and believe that you can do important tasks, then you can. If you think you cannot, you will almost certainly not. Courage is one of the things Shannon had in abundance. You only need to think about its main theorem. He wants to create an encoding method, but he doesn’t know what to do, so he creates random code. Then he gets stuck. And then he asks the impossible question: “What would a random middle code do?” He then proves that the middle code is arbitrarily good, and therefore there must be at least one good code. Who, no matter how the person with infinite courage, would decide to think these thoughts? This is a property of great scientists: they have courage. They go forward under unbelievable circumstances; they think and keep thinking.
Age is another factor that physicists are particularly worried about. They always say that you need to do this when you are young, or you will never do it. Einstein did his work at a very early age, and all the guys from quantum mechanics were disgustingly young when they did their best work. Most mathematicians, theoretical physicists and astrophysicists do what we consider their best work when they are young. Not that they are not doing good work at the old age, but we most of all appreciate what they did early. On the other hand, in music, politics and literature, what we consider the best work is often done at a later age. I do not know where your area is on this scale, but age has an effect.
But let me say why age seems to have such an effect. To begin with, if you do some good work, you will find that you are on all sorts of committees and are no longer able to work. You may find that you are like Brattein when he received the Nobel Prize. On the day when the awards were announced, we all gathered in the Arnold audience. All three winners rose and spoke. Bratteyn almost with tears in his eyes said: “I know about this effect of the Nobel Prize and I will not allow him to influence me. I will remain the good old Walter Brattein. ” "Well," I said to myself, "this is great." But after a few weeks, I saw that it affected him. Now he could only work on big tasks.
When you're famous, it's hard to work on small tasks. That's what ruined Shannon. After information theory, what else can you do? Great scientists often make this mistake. They stop planting small acorns, of which mighty oaks grow. They are trying to do something big. And it doesn't work that way. This is another reason you discover: when you get an early recognition, it sort of sterilizes you. I will give you my favorite statement of many years. The Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, in my opinion, destroyed more good scientists than any other institution created, judging by what they did before they got there and after. Not that they were not good then. But they were great before him, and only just good after.
This raises, maybe a bit out of turn, the question of working conditions. What most people consider better working conditions are not. It is perfectly clear that they are not, because people are often the most productive when working conditions are poor. One of the best periods of the Cambridge Physics Laboratories was when they had almost barracks - they then did the best physics of all time.
I will give a story from my own life. It quickly became clear that Bell Labs would not give me the right amount of programmers to program computers in absolute binary code. It was clear that they would not. But it all worked that way. I could go to the west coast and easily get a job in the airlines, but interesting people were at Bell Labs, and the guys at the airlines were not interesting. I thought for a long time whether I wanted to go or not, and I thought about how to combine the best of two possible worlds. In the end, I said to myself: “Hamming, because you think that cars can do almost everything. Why can't you have them write programs? ”What seemed to me a lack at first made me take up automatic programming very early. What seems to be a disadvantage, when changing a point of view, is often one of your best advantages. But it’s unlikely that you will think like that when you first see the state of affairs and say: “Oooh, I will never get enough programmers, so how will I do some worthwhile programs?”
There are many similar stories. Grace Hopper has similar stories. I think if you look closely, you will see that often great scientists, turning the task a little, turned a disadvantage into an advantage. For example, when many scientists discovered that they could not attend to a task, they finally began to study why they could not. They then turned it differently and said: "Well, of course, because here it is." And get an important result. Therefore, ideal working conditions are something very strange. The conditions you want are not always good for you.
Now about the drive. You can see that most great scientists have a terrific drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had a terrific drive. One day, after three or four years since I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was a bit younger than me. John was a genius, and I was obviously not. Well, I flew into Boda's office and asked: “How can anyone at my age know as much as John Tukey?” Bod leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, smiled a little and said, “You would be surprised, Hamming, how much would you know if you had worked as much for so many years as he did. ” I just crawled out of the office!
Bod said: “Knowledge and productivity are like a cumulative percentage.” To take two people of roughly equal capacity, one of whom works ten percent more than the other, and with time he will be more than twice as productive. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more opportunity. This is very similar to the cumulative percentage. I will not name the bid, but it is very high. To take two people with exactly the same ability, and one who manages to think an hour more for an hour, will eventually be much more productive. I took the note of Boda to heart. I spent a lot more of my time trying to work a little more, and I found that I could actually do more. I do not like to say this in front of my wife, but I sometimes neglected her because I had to work. You must neglect different things if you intend to do what you want. There is no doubt.
In terms of drive, Edison said: "Genius is 99% of sweat and 1% of inspiration." He may have exaggerated, but the idea is that good, steady work will lead you surprisingly far. A steady effort and more cleverly directed labor is what gives the result. Here is the problem: drive, misdirected, doesn't lead you anywhere. I often wondered why so many of my good friends at Bell Labs, who worked so much or more than I, could not show anything. The wrong direction of effort is very serious. Just a little hard work; he must be guided wisely.
There is another trait that I want to talk about; this feature is uncertainty. it took me some time to discover its importance. Most people love to believe that something is true or false. Great scientists tolerate uncertainty very well. They are confident in theory enough to move forward. And they doubt it enough to notice the mistakes and shortcomings, to be able to step forward and create a new theory to replace the incorrect. If you are too sure, you will never notice the flaws; if in doubt, do not move. Need the right balance. But many great scientists know well why their theories are true, and they also know well and do not forget about inconsistencies. Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down all the evidence that seemed to disprove his theory, because otherwise they would have escaped his consciousness. When you discover obvious flaws, you should carefully monitor them and see how they can be explained, or how the theory can be changed to take them into account. Often come across significant additions. Significant additions are rarely made by adding another decimal place. It comes down to emotional commitment. Most great scientists are absolutely committed to their task. Those who do not become committed rarely produce outstanding, first-class work.
Farther. Emotional commitment is not enough. This is clearly a necessary condition. And I think I can tell why. Everyone who has studied creativity, as a result, is forced to say: "Creativity comes from your subconscious". Somehow, unexpectedly, it just appears. Well, we know very little about the subconscious; but you know pretty well that your dreams come from your subconscious too. And you know that your dreams are to a large extent - reworking the experiences of the day. If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day, day after day, your subconscious mind has nothing to do but work on your task. And one morning you wake up and here is the answer. For those who do not become committed to their current task, the subconscious mind is distracted by other things and does not produce a great result. Therefore, you need to manage yourself this way: when you have a really important task, you should not allow anything else to occupy the center of your attention - you should keep your thoughts on the task.You need to starve your subconscious, so that he has to work on your task, so that you can sleep peacefully and get an answer for free in the morning.
Alan Chinovet mentioned that I had dinner at the physicists' table. I had lunch with mathematicians and found that I already knew quite a lot in mathematics; I did not particularly study. The table of physicists was, as he said, fascinatingly interesting, but it seems to me that he exaggerated how much I brought. It was very interesting to listen to William Shockley, Walter Brattein, John Bardeen, John Bertrand Johnson, Kenneth McKay and other people, and I learned a lot. But, unfortunately, people left, because they received Nobel prizes and promotions, and there was garbage. So there was no point in dining with them!
On the other side of the dining room was the chemists table. I worked with one of the guys - Dave McCall; besides, he was courting our secretary at the time. I went and asked if they would mind if I joined them. They couldn't say no, so I started having lunch with them. And I began to ask: “What are important tasks in your area?” And after a week or so: “What important tasks are you working on?” After some time I came and asked: “If what you are doing is not important and if you don’t think it will lead to something important, why are you working on it? ”They didn’t complain about it after that; I had to find someone else to dine with! It was in the spring.
In the fall, Dave McCall stopped me in the corridor and said, “Hamming, your remark has crept under my skin. I thought about it all summer - what important tasks are there in my area. I have not changed the direction of my research, but I think it’s worth it. ” And I answered: “Thank you, Dave,” and went on. I noticed a couple of months later that he was made head of the department. And then he became a member of the National Academy of Engineering. I noticed that he achieved success. I have never heard the names of other guys at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles. They could not ask themselves: “What tasks are important in my field?”
Unless you are working on an important task, it is unlikely that you will do an important job. This is absolutely clear.Great scientists have carefully and carefully thought through a number of important tasks in their field, and they are looking for how to approach them. Let me warn you: an important task must be formulated carefully. Three, in a certain sense, important tasks in physics never worked while I was at Bell Labs. By important I mean a guaranteed Nobel Prize and any amount of money you want to name. We did not work on (1) time travel, (2) teleportation, and (3) antigravity. These tasks were not important, because we have no approach to them. It is not the consequences of the decision that make the task important, but whether you have a reasonable approach. That is what makes the problem important. When I say that most scientists do not work on important tasks, I mean it in that sense. The average scientist, as far as I can observe,spends almost all his time on tasks that he knows are not important, and neither does he think that they will lead to important tasks.
I said earlier about planting acorns so that oaks can grow. You may not always know exactly where to be, but you can work where something can happen. And even if you think that great science is a matter of luck, you can stand on top of a mountain where lightning strikes; you don’t need to hide in a valley where you are safe. But the average scientist almost always does a safe routine work and therefore he (or she) does not give out much. It is so simple. If you want to do a great job, you should definitely work on important tasks and you should have an idea.
In this vein, with some jolts from John Tukey and other people, I finally started what I called the “time of big thoughts”. When I went to dinner at noon Friday, after that I discussed only big thoughts. By big thoughts I mean such: “What will be the role of computers in all AT & T?”, “How will computers change science?” For example, I saw that at that time nine out of ten experiments were done in the laboratory, and one out of ten on the computer . I once made a remark to the vice-presidents that it would be the opposite, that is, nine out of ten experiments will be done on a computer and one in the laboratory. They knew that I was a crazy mathematician and I had no contact with reality. I knew that they were wrong, and time showed that they were wrong, and I was right. They built labs when they were not needed. I have seen,that computers are transforming science because I spent a lot of time wondering what will be the impact of computers on science and how can I change it. I asked myself: “How will Bell Labs change this?” Another time I made a remark to the same address that more than half of the people at Bell Labs would work closely with computers before I left. Well, all of you now have terminals. I thought a lot about where my area is going, where opportunities were, and what important things I can do. I need to move to where there is a chance to do something important.that more than half of the people at Bell Labs will work closely with the computers before I leave. Well, all of you now have terminals. I thought a lot about where my area is going, where opportunities were, and what important things I can do. I need to move to where there is a chance to do something important.that more than half of the people at Bell Labs will work closely with the computers before I leave. Well, all of you now have terminals. I thought a lot about where my area is going, where opportunities were, and what important things I can do. I need to move to where there is a chance to do something important.
Most great scientists know many important tasks. They have about 10-20 important tasks for which they are looking for an approach. And when they see a new idea, you can hear them say: “Oh, this applies to this task.” They drop everything else and get down to business. I can tell a horrible story that was told to me, but I cannot vouch for its veracity. I was sitting at the airport talking to my friend from Los Alamos about how fortunate that the atom fission experiment was conducted in Europe when we did it, because it made us work on the atomic bomb here in the US He replied: “No. At Berkeley, we collected a bunch of data; we didn't get to process them, because we built some more equipment, but if we processed the data, we would open the atom division. ” It was in their hands and they did not do it. They became the second!
Great scientists, when the opportunity arises, rise and rush towards it. They drop everything else. They get rid of other things and move on to the idea, because they have already thought it over. Their minds are ready; they see the opportunity and follow it. Of course, opportunities often do not work, but you don’t need to get into many of them to do a great job. One of the main tricks is to live long!
Another feature - it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or closed. I noticed that if the door to your office is closed, you can do more work from day to day, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later, you somehow do not really know what tasks to work on. All the work you are hard at work with is of mediocre importance. The one who works with the open door is interrupted all the time, but from time to time he also receives guidance on what the world is and what could be important. I cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship and one can say that “a closed door symbolizes a closed mind”. I dont know.But I can say that there is a good correlation between those who work with an open door and those who end up doing important things, although people who work with closed doors often work harder. It seems that they are working a little on those things — not very, but enough to let the glory slip.
I want to talk about one more topic. It is based on a song that I think many of you know: “It's not about what you do, but how you do it.” I will start with my own example. I was led to in the days of absolute binary code to solve on a digital computer a task that could not be solved by the best analog computers. And I got a solution. When I thought carefully, I said to myself: “You know, Hamming, you will have to file a report on this military mission. When you spend a lot of money, you have to account for it and each analog lab will want a report to see if they can find any flaws in it. ” I made the necessary integration in a very lousy way, to say the least, but I got a solution. And I realized that in reality the task was not just to get a solution; she was into show for the first time, and without any doubt, that a digital machine could beat an analog one on its own territory. I reworked the solution method, created a theory, beautiful and elegant, and changed the way we calculated the solution; the results did not differ. The published report was an elegant method, which in subsequent years was known as the “method of integrating Hamming’s differential equations”. It is already outdated, but for a while this method was very good. By slightly changing the task, I did a meaningful job, not a trivial one.as the “method of integrating Hamming’s differential equations”. It is already outdated, but for a while this method was very good. By slightly changing the task, I did a meaningful job, not a trivial one.as the “method of integrating Hamming’s differential equations”. It is already outdated, but for a while this method was very good. By slightly changing the task, I did a meaningful job, not a trivial one.
In the same way, using a car in the attic in the early days, I solved the problem after task; quite a few were successful and there were several setbacks. One Friday, having completed the task, I went home, and, strangely, I was not happy; I was depressed. I had a life that consisted of a long series of tasks - task after task, task after task. After some reflection, I decided: “No, I have to be in the mass production of a variable product. I have to deal with all the tasks of the next year, and not just the one that is now before me. ” By changing the question, I still got the same or better results, but I changed the case and did a meaningful job. I came up with a big task: how do I beat the cars and complete all the tasks of the next year, when I don’t know what they will be? How do I prepare for this? How do I accomplish this particular taskto be on top? How do I obey Newton's rule? He said: "If I saw farther than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants." These days we stand on the feet of each other!
You should do your job so that others can build on it, so that they say: "Yes, I stood on the shoulders of such and such, and I saw further." The essence of science is cumulative. By slightly changing the task, you can often do a great job, and not just a good job. Instead of going to individual tasks, I decided that I would never deal with individual problems anymore, if not as classes of problems.
If you are good at math, you know that trying to summarize often means that the solution is simple. Often, stopping and saying: “He wants to solve the problem, but it is characteristic of this and that. I can approach the whole class of problems with a more excellent method, and not such a specific one, because earlier I was immersed in unnecessary details. ” Abstraction often simplifies matters. Since then, I have postponed the methods and prepared for future tasks.
Concluding this part, I remind you: a bad worker who blames his tools; A good person takes up the job with what he has and gets the best solution he can. And I say that by changing the task, looking at things differently, you can make a significant difference in your productivity, because you can either work so that people can build on what you have done, or so that the next person in fact, you had to repeat what you did again. This applies not only to the work itself, but also to how you compile the report, how you write the publication. This is all relation as a whole. A broad, general work is as easy to do as a very narrow one. And it is much more satisfying!
I now came to a very tasteless topic. It is not enough to do the work;need to sell it. “Selling” for a scientist is a very awkward task. It's disgusting; you don't have to do this. The world, in theory, must wait, and when you do something great, they must rush and clap. But the fact is that everyone is busy with their own work. You must present the work so that they postpone their studies, see what you have done, read, come back and say: "Yes, that was good." I suggest you, when you turn the pages of the magazine, to wonder why you are reading some articles, but not others. You'd better write your report so that when it is published in the Physical Review or any other publication of any kind, and when readers scroll through, they will not scroll through your pages, but they will stop and read your work. If they do not stop and do not read it, you will not receive recognition.
There are three things you must do to sell. You have to write clearly and well for people to read; you must learn to give rather formal lectures; and you must learn to give informal lectures. We have a lot of so-called "unknown scientists." At the conference, they are silent, and three weeks after the decision is made, they submit a report where they write why they should do so. Well, too late. They don’t stand up right in the middle of a hot conference, in the middle of a discussion, and don’t say: “We should do it for such and such reasons.” You should master this form of communication as well as prepared speeches.
When I first started, I practically became physically ill when I was giving lectures, and I was very, very nervous. I realized that I had to either learn how to lecture smoothly, or I, in fact, would ruin my career. When IBM first asked me to give a lecture in New York, I decided that I would give a very good lecture. The lecture they want; not technical, but wide. And at the end, if she likes it, I will quietly say: “At any moment, whenever you want, I will come and give you a lecture.” As a result, I received a lot of practice, giving lectures for limited audiences, and stopped being afraid.
I could also learn which methods were effective and which were not. Attending meetings, I have already studied why some works are memorized, and most are not. A technical person wants to give a very limited technical lecture. As a rule, the audience wants a broad lecture of a general nature and wants a much more general overview and introduction than the speaker wants to give. As a result, many lectures are ineffective. The lecturer calls the topic and suddenly dives into the details. Few people can keep track. You must draw a big picture to explain why this is important, and then slowly expand the sketch of what has been done. Then more people will say: “Yes, Joe did it” or “Mary did that, I really see what it is about. Yes, Mary gave a really good lecture, I understand what she did. ” As a rule, people give a very limited, safe lecture;this is usually ineffective. In addition, many lectures are full of information. Therefore, I will say that this idea of ​​selling is obvious.
Let me summarize. You have to work on important tasks. I deny that all this is just luck, but I admit that there is a good amount of luck. I subscribe to the words of Pasteur: "Good luck favors the prepared mind." I really like the way I did. For many years on Fridays only big thoughts, which meant that I spent 10% of my time trying to solve big problems in my field; that is, what was important and what was not. In the early days I discovered that I used to believe in one thing, and nevertheless went the other way all week. It was somehow stupid. If I truly believe that the matter is there, why do I step here? I have to either change my goal or change what I do. Therefore, I changed what I was doing and walked in the direction I considered important. It is so easy.
Here you can say that you do not decide what you should work on. Well, when you first start, you may not decide. But as soon as you become a little successful, more people start asking for results than you can give out, and you have little choice, albeit incomplete. I will tell a story about this; she is about training your boss. I had a boss named Schelkunov; he is still a very good friend of mine. Some military man came to me and demanded some decisions by Friday. Well, I have already diverted my computing resources to data processing for a group of scientists; I was knee-deep in short, small, important tasks. This military man wanted me to solve his task by the end of Friday's day. I said, "No, I will give it to you on Monday. I can work on it at the weekend. I will not do it now. ” He goes to my boss,Schelkunov, and Schelkunov says: “You must do this for him; he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "Schelkunov says: “You must do this for him; he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "Schelkunov says: “You must do this for him; he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "“You have to do it for him; he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "“You have to do it for him; he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "he should get it by Friday. ” I ask him why; he replies that I must. I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "what should i I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "what should i I said: “Okay, Sergey, but when you sit in your office on Friday afternoon, you will see this guy walk out the door.” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "how this guy will come through that door. ” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "how this guy will come through that door. ” I gave the military man a solution at the end of Friday. Then I went to Schelkunov and sat down; when the man left, I said: “See, Shchelkunov, this guy has nothing in his hands; but I gave him solutions. ” On Monday morning, Shchelkunov called him and asked: “Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better for him not to say that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "“Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "“Did you come to work at the weekend?” I heard a pause when that guy tried to understand what would happen next; but he knew that he would have to sign up, and it is better not to tell him that he came when he did not come, so he said that he was not there. Since then Schelkunov always said to me: “You set deadlines; you change them. "
One lesson was enough to teach my boss why I don’t want to do big tasks that crowd out research computing, and why it was justified that I didn’t do the urgent work that takes up all the computing resources. I instead wanted to use power to solve a large number of small tasks. Again, in the early days I was limited in computing power, and in my area it was believed that "machine maths do not need anything." But I needed more machine resources. Every time I had to answer to some scientist from some other field: “No, I can't; I have no machine resources. ” He complained. I replied: "Go tell your vice president that Hamming needs more computing resources." After a while I sawthat up there many people said to my vice president: “Your man needs more computational resources.” I got them!
I also did one more thing. When I borrowed some small programming resources that we had at the dawn of computers, I said: “Our programmers do not get the recognition they deserve. When you publish your work, thank this programmer, or you will no longer receive my help. That programmer should be thanked by name; she worked hard. ” I waited a couple of years, and then looked through the articles in the BSTJ (Bell System Technical Journal) for a year, and thought what percentage thanked some programmer. I carried it to the boss and said: “That's what central role computing systems play in Bell Labs; if BSTJ is important, that’s how important computing systems are. ” He had to surrender. You can train your bosses. This is hard work. In this lecture, I look only from the bottom up; I do not look down.But I am telling you how you can get what you want, despite top management. You have to sell your ideas there too.
Well, now I come to the question "Is it worth the effort to be a great scientist?". To answer this, you need to ask people. When you go through the gates of their modesty, most people will say, “Yes, doing first-class work and knowing this is as good as wine, women, and a song put together.” And if it’s a woman, she’s going to say, “Yes, it’s as good as wine, men, and a song put together.” And if you look at the bosses, they drop in or ask for reports to participate in the moments of discovery. They are always on the way. So it is obvious that those who have already done this want to do it again. But this is a limited sample. I never dared to ask those who did not do the great work, what they felt about everything. This is a biased sample, but I still think it's worth the effort. I think,which is definitely worth trying and doing first-class work, because, in truth, the value is greater in the fight than in the result. Efforts to make something of themselves seem valuable in their own right. Success or fame is a kind of dividend, in my opinion.
I told you how to do it. It's so easy, so why do so many people with all their talents fail? For example, in my opinion, today in the mathematical department of Bell Labs there are enough more capable and gifted people than I, but they have not given out much. Some of them gave out more than me; Shannon did more of me, and some others did a lot, but I was more productive than a large number of other guys who were better gifted. Why is that?What happened to them? Why did so many people who gave high hopes fail?
Well, one of the reasons is drive and commitment. People who take on great work with less ability, but who are committed to it, do more than those who have tremendous skills and who only do superficial work, who work during the day, then go home and do other things, and return to work only the next day. They do not have the deep commitment that is needed for truly top-notch work. They give out a lot of good work, but we are talking about first-class work. There is a difference. Practical, talented people almost always give out a good job. We are talking about outstanding work; one that gets the Nobel Prize and deserves recognition.
The second thing, I think, is the problem of personality flaws. I will give an example of a guy I met in Irvine. He was the head of the computer center and he was on temporary assignment as a special assistant to the president of the university. It was clear that he had a job with a great future. Once he brought me to his office and showed me his method of processing letters and how he took care of his correspondence. He noted how ineffective the secretary was. He kept all his letters laid out around; he knew where everything was. And he could write a letter in his word processor. He bragged about how amazing it was, and how he could do a lot more work without the intervention of the secretary. Well, I talked to the secretary. The secretary said: “Of course, I cannot help him; I do not receive his letters. He does not give me login details. I dont know,where and what he lays out. Of course, I can't help him. ” I went back to him and said: “Look, if you do everything alone by the current method, you can only advance so much and no further. If you learn to work with the system, you can go as far as the system can promote you. ” And he never advanced further. He had a personal flaw - the desire for total control, and he did not want to understand that the support of the system was needed.He had a personal flaw - the desire for total control, and he did not want to understand that the support of the system was needed.He had a personal flaw - the desire for total control, and he did not want to understand that the support of the system was needed.
It happens again and again; good scientists are struggling with the system, instead of learning how to work with it and use the benefits it gives. It gives a lot, if you learn how to use it. It takes patience, but you can learn to use the system fairly well, and you can learn to bypass it. In the end, if you need the answer “No”, you just go to the boss and easily get “No”. If you want to do something, do not ask, do it. Provide him a fait accompli. Don't give him a chance to say no to you. But if you want “No,” it’s easy to get.
Another personality flaw is the statement of the ego. I will talk about my own experience. I came from Los Alamos and in the early days I used a computer in New York at Madison Avenue, where we just rented time. I was still wearing Western clothes: big slant pockets, bolos and all that. I noticed that I did not receive the same good service as other people. I began to follow. I come and wait for my turn, and I feel that the attitude towards me is not impartial. I asked myself: “Why? None of IBM's vice-presidents said "Show Hamming where the crabs overwinter." This was done by the secretaries. When a window appears, they find someone to give it to, but they find someone else. Why?I didn’t treat them badly. ” The answer was that I did not dress the way they felt that a person should dress in that situation. It all boiled down to this - I dressed in the wrong way. I had to decide whether to assert my ego and dress, as I want it to constantly take energy away from my professional life, or to pretend to be appropriate. I decided to pretend to be appropriate. I immediately began to receive much better service. And now, as an old bright character, I get better service than other people.
You must dress accordingly to the expectations of the audience you are referring to. If I'm going to speak at the MIT computer center, I will put on a bolo and an old corduroy jacket or something else. I understand enough to not allow my clothes, my appearance, my manners to prevent what is important to me. Many scholars feel that they need to assert their ego and act in their own way. They have to do it this way or the other, and they constantly pay for it.
John Tukey almost always dressed very casually. He came to an important office and it took a long time for the other person to understand that he was a first-class person and better to listen to him. John spent a lot of time overcoming this rejection. This is wasted power! I am not saying that you must fit the environment; I say that the appearance of compliance helps a lot. If you assert your ego in one way or another - “this will be in my opinion” - you will pay for your entire professional career. And this, throughout life, will be a huge unnecessary problem.
Having taken the trouble to tell jokes and be a little friendly with the secretaries, I received excellent help from them. For example, once for some stupid reason, all the copying resources on Murray Hill turned out to be occupied. Do not ask me why, but it just happened. I had to do something. My secretary called someone in Holmdel, jumped into the company car, spent an hour on the road and copied the material, and then returned. It was a reward for making efforts to encourage her, tell jokes to her and generally be friendly; it was such a small extra effort that paid off for me later. Realizing that you must use the system, and learning how to make the system do your work, you learn to change the system to fit your needs. Or you can constantly fight with it,lead a small undeclared war all his life.
And I think that John Tukey paid a terrible price without any need. In any case, he was a genius, but I think it would be much better and much easier if he wanted to adjust a little, instead of asserting the ego. He always dresses as he wants. And this concerns not only clothes, but thousands of other things; people continue to struggle with the system. But not that you sometimes should not do it!
When they moved the library from the middle of Murray Hill to the outskirts, a friend of mine applied for a bicycle. Well, the organization was not stupid. They waited a bit and sent him a map of the area with the question: "Could you please indicate on this map which way you are likely to travel so that we can get insurance for you." A few more weeks went by; they asked: "Where will you keep your bike and how will it be locked so that we can do this and that." He eventually realized that he would, of course, be bureaucratized to death, so he succumbed. He became president of Bell Laboratories.
Barney Oliver was a good man. He once wrote a letter to IEEE. At that time, the standard shelf height at Bell Labs was this and that, and the height of the IEEE Proceedings publication was greater. The standard height of the shelves could not be changed, so he wrote to a person at IEEE publishing a letter like: “There are so many IEEE members at Bell Labs and the standard height of the shelves is this, so the size of the journal should be changed. He sent it signed by his boss. He received a copy with a signature, but he still does not know whether the original was sent or not. I am not saying that efforts should not be made to reform. I say that according to my observations of capable people, they do not allow themselves to indulge in this kind of struggle. They play it a little, drop it, and do their work.
Many second-rate guys get stuck in some small nonsense of the system and go to war. They spend their energy on a stupid project. Here you can tell me that someone has to change the system. I agree.Someone must. But who do you want to be? A person who changes the system, or a person who makes a first-class science? Which of these people do you want to be? When you are struggling with the system, be aware of what you are doing, how far you want to go for fun, and how much energy you spend on fighting the system. My advice is to leave it to someone else so that you can become a first-class scientist. Very few of you can simultaneously reform the system and become a first-class scientist.
On the other hand, we cannot always give in. It happens that a certain share of resistance is needed. I observe that almost all scientists enjoy the pleasure of a certain amount of picking the system simply out of love for it. It boils down to, in fact, that you cannot be original in one area without originality in other areas. Originality means different from others. You cannot be an original scientist without any other original characteristics. But many scientists allow their vagaries in other things to force themselves to pay a much higher price than necessary for satisfying the ego. I am not against the approval of the ego at all; I am against some.
Another flaw is anger. Often, the scientist becomes angry, and so it is impossible to approach things. Laughter - yes, anger - no. Anger is not directed there. You have to cooperate, not fight the system all the time.
Another thing - you should look at the positive side of things instead of the negative. I have already cited a few, and one can give even more examples of how, in a particular situation, changing my view, I turned what was clearly a disadvantage into an advantage. I will give one more example. I am a narcissist; there is no doubt. I knew that many people who took a sabbatical to write a book did not complete it on time. Therefore, before I went on vacation, I told all my friends that the book would be ready! Of course, I would complete it - I would be ashamed to return without it! I used my ego to make me act as I wanted. I boasted about being forced to do it. I have found many times that, being in the position of a rat driven into a corner, I am surprisingly capable. I found that when I say "Oh, yes,I will give you a solution by Tuesday, without any idea how to do it, it works. By Sunday evening, I thought very hard about how to do it by Tuesday.
I often put my pride in jeopardy and sometimes I failed, but, as I said, as a rat cornered, I was surprised at how often I did a good job. I think you need to learn how to use yourself. I think you need to know how to look at the situation from the other side, which will increase the chances of success.
Here it must be said that self-deception is very, very peculiar to people. There are plenty of ways to distort the situation and deceive yourself. When you ask "why you did not do this and that," the person has a thousand excuses. If you look at the history of science, there are usually ten ready-made people, and we reward the person who was first. The other nine say, "Well, I had an idea, but I did it, and so on and so forth." A lot of excuses. Why were you not the first? Why not done right? Do not try on excuses. Do not be fooled. You can tell other people any excuses. I'm not against.But in front of you, try to be honest.
If you really want to be a first-class scholar, you need to know yourself, your weaknesses, your strengths, and your bad weaknesses, like my vanity. How can you turn a disadvantage into an advantage? How can you change the situation when you do not have enough personnel to move somewhere, when exactly this is what you need? I repeat once again what I saw when studying history, that a successful scientist changed his point of view and what was a disadvantage became an advantage.
In general, I argue that here are some reasons why so many people who can reach greatness do not succeed: they do not work on important tasks; they do not become emotionally involved; they are not trying to turn a difficult situation into something else that is easily solved, but still important; and they find excuses for not doing something. They keep saying that this is a matter of luck. I told you how easy it is; Moreover, I told you how to make a difference. So go and become great scientists!
( The end of the formal part of the lecture ).
Discussion - Questions and Answers
Alan Chinowett : It was 50 minutes of concentrated wisdom and observation gathered over a fantastic career; I lost track of the observations that hit the mark. Some of them are very, very timely. One of them is a plea for more computer power; This morning I have heard nothing but this from several people - again and again. So that was exactly the point today, although 20-30 years have passed since you made such comments, Dick. I see a variety of lessons that we can all learn from your lecture. For example, I hope that when I walk through the corridors in the future, I don’t see so many closed doors in Bellcore. This observation seemed to me very intriguing.
Thank you so much, Dick, these were wonderful memories. I now open time for questions. I’m sure many would like to respond to some of the ideas that Dick expressed.
Hamming: First let me answer Alan about computers. I had computers in the research department and for ten years I repeated to my management: “Remove this! & @ #% Machine from the research department. We are forced to solve problems all the time. We cannot conduct research work because we are too busy with the support and operation of computers. ” As a result, the message reached. They removed the cars from the research department somewhere else. I became, at least, persona non grata, and I was surprised that people did not kick me for taking away their favorite toy from everyone. I went to Ed Davis's office and said, “Look, Ed, you have to give your researchers a car. If you give them a big car, we’ll go back to the same problem that was when we were so busy with cars that we couldn’t think.Give them the smallest car you can, because they are very capable people. They will learn to do work on a small machine instead of a large one. ” This is how UNIX appeared. We gave them a rather small car and they decided to make it do big things. They had to create a system for this. It's called UNIX!
Alan Chinovet : I just have to answer that. In our current environment, Dick, we struggle with some bureaucracy attributed to or demanded by regulators, and there is one phrase that was expressed by one angry assistant vice-president and I used again and again. He growled that "Unix was never the goal!"
Question : What about personal stress? Does it affect?
Hamming: Yes, it does. If you are not involved emotionally, it does not. I had ulcers in the initial form for almost all the years working at Bell Labs. I have since moved to the naval school and relaxed a bit, and now my health is much better. But if you want to be a great scientist, you have to put up with stress. You can lead a pleasant life; you can be either a “good guy” or a great scholar. But “the good guys are the last to come,” as Leo Duroche said. If you want to lead a pleasant happy life with a lot of entertainment and other things, then lead a pleasant life.
Question: With a note of courage no one can argue; but those of us who have gray hair, or who are quite authoritative, do not have to worry too much. But among young people these days, I feel real anxiety about taking risks in a highly competitive environment. Do you have any wise words about this?
Hamming: I will remember Ed Davis again. Ed Davis thought about the total loss of courage in our society. I think we went through different periods. After going through the war, coming out of Los Alamos, where we created the bomb, a group of people with powerful character came from the work on radars and other things, into the mathematical departments and research. They just saw how things are done. They had just won the war, which was fantastic. Our courage had reasons, and therefore we did a lot. I can not arrange the same situation to repeat it. I cannot blame the current generation for the lack of courage, although I agree with what you are saying. I just can't blame someone for that. It does not seem to me that they have a desire for greatness; they have no boldness to that. But we had it, because we were in favorable circumstances;we came out of a tremendously successful war. In this war things looked very, very bad; it was a very desperate struggle, as you well know. And success, I think, gave us courage and self-confidence; that is why from the late forties and in the fifties you see tremendous productivity in laboratories. Because many of us used to have to learn things that we didn’t want to learn, and we had to keep the door open — and then we could use what we learned. It is true and I can do nothing about it; I also can not blame the current generation. This is just a fact.that is why from the late forties and in the fifties you see tremendous productivity in laboratories. Because many of us used to have to learn things that we didn’t want to learn, and we had to keep the door open — and then we could use what we learned. It is true and I can do nothing about it; I also can not blame the current generation. This is just a fact.that is why from the late forties and in the fifties you see tremendous productivity in laboratories. Because many of us used to have to learn things that we didn’t want to learn, and we had to keep the door open — and then we could use what we learned. It is true and I can do nothing about it; I also can not blame the current generation. This is just a fact.
Question : Is there something that management can or should do?
Hamming : Management can do very little. If you want to talk about research management, this is a completely different topic. It will take another hour. This lecture is about how an individual does a very successful research job despite the actions of management or any other confrontation. And how do you do it? So, as people who, as I saw, did it. This is all so simple and so difficult.
Question : Is Brainsturm a daily process?
HammingA: It used to be a very popular thing, but it does not seem to justify itself. For myself, I find it desirable to talk with other people; but a brainstorming session rarely gives anything. I go to someone to talk and say: “Look, I think there is something here. That's what I think, I see ... "And we begin to discuss. But at the same time you want to talk with capable people. To give another analogy, you know the idea of ​​"critical mass." If you have enough, then you have a critical mass. There is also an idea that I call "sound absorbers." When you have too many sound absorbers, you give out ideas, and they just say "yes, yes, yes." You want a critical mass in action; “Yes, it reminds me of this and that” or “Have you thought about this?”. When you communicate with other people,you want to get rid of these sound absorbers, which are nice people, but just answer "Oh, yes." You want to find people who will immediately stimulate you.
For example, you could not talk to John Pierce and not be stimulated. There were other people with whom I spoke. For example, Ed Gilbert; I regularly went to his office and asked him questions, listened, and came back stimulated. I carefully chose people who were brainstorming or not engaged, because sound absorbers are a curse. They are just "good guys"; they fill the space and contribute nothing; only absorb ideas, and new ideas just die, instead of responding further. Yes, I find it necessary to talk with people. I think people with closed doors do not do this, so they don’t manage to hone their ideas, like “Have you ever noticed anything here?”. I never knew anything about something - I can go and see. Someone points the way. When I visit there, I already find several bookswhich I have to read when I'm at home. I talk to people and ask questions when I think they can answer and give hints that I don’t know about. I go out and look!
Question : How did you divide your time between reading, writing, and research work itself?
Hamming : From the first day I thought that I should spend at least as much time on polishing and presenting as on the research itself. Now at least 50% of the time should go to the presentation. This is a big, big number.
Question : How much effort should go to work in the library?
HammingA: It depends on the area. I will say this about this. There was a guy at Bell Labs. Very, very smart guy. He was always in the library, he read everything. If you wanted links, you went to him and he gave you all sorts of different links. But in the process of the formation of these theories, I formed a statement: in the long run, not a single effect will be named after him. He has already left Bell Labs and is an adjunct professor. He was very valuable; it is certain. He wrote some very good articles in the Physical Review; but no effect was named after him because he read too much. If you read all the time what other people have done, you will think as they thought. If you want to think new thoughts, different thoughts, then do what many creative people do:formulate the task clearly enough and refuse to look at any answers until you have thoroughly thought out the task - how will you solve it, how can you change it a little to put it correctly. So yes, you need to be aware. You need to be in the know more to find out what problems there are, than to read to find solutions. Reading to find solutions does not seem to be the path to meaningful research. Therefore, I will give two answers. You read; but it does not matter how much, but how you read.Therefore, I will give two answers. You read; but it does not matter how much, but how you read.Therefore, I will give two answers. You read; but it does not matter how much, but how you read.
Question : How to make your name something called?
Hamming : Doing great work. I will tell you the story of the Hamming window. I strained Tukey quite a few times, and I received a call from him from Princeton. He wrote about the spectral power density and asked me if I would mind if he called a certain window "Hamming window". And I answered him: “Well, John, you know perfectly well that I did only a small part of the work, but you also did a lot.” He replied: “Yes, Hamming, but you contributed a lot of little things. You deserve some recognition. ” Therefore, he called it the Hamming window. Here let me continue. I often pushed John about true greatness. I said that true greatness is when your name as ampere, watt and fourier is when it is written with a small letter. So the Hamming window appeared.
Question : Dick, would you comment on the relative effectiveness of lecturing, writing publications, and books?
HammingA: In the short term, publications are very important if you want to stimulate someone tomorrow. If you want long-term recognition, writing books seems to me a more meaningful contribution, because most of us need to orient ourselves. In our days of almost infinite knowledge, we need to navigate to find a way. I will tell you what infinite knowledge is. From the time of Newton to our days, scientific knowledge doubles every 17 years or so. And we are coping with this specialization. In the next 340 years, at this rate, there will be 20 doublings, that is, a million. There will be a million specializations in every existing area. That won't do. The growth of knowledge will choke until we have other tools. I believe that books that are trying to digest, coordinate, get rid of repetitions,get rid of less fruitful methods and clearly present the main ideas that are known now will be appreciated by future generations. Public lectures are needed, private lectures are needed, publications are needed. But I tend to think that in the long run, books that miss what is not important are more important than books that tell you everything, because you do not want to know everything. "I don't want to know so much about penguins." You want to know only the essence."I don't want to know so much about penguins." You want to know only the essence."I don't want to know so much about penguins." You want to know only the essence.
Question : You mentioned the problem of the Nobel Prize and what subsequently becomes with some people. Is this not a kind of more general problem of fame? What can be done here?
Hamming: You can do, for example, this. Approximately every seven years significantly, if not completely, change the area of ​​their work. For example, I switched from computational mathematics to hardware, from there to software, and so on, because there is a tendency to spend my ideas. When you come to a new area, you have to start over again, like a newborn. You are no longer a big important person and you can start over and you can start planting acorns that will become huge oaks. Shannon, I believe, ruined himself. When he left Bell Labs, I said: "This is the end of Shannon's scientific career." I got a lot of fire from my friends, who said that Shannon was as smart as ever. I replied: "Yes, he will be just as smart, but this is the end of his scientific career," and I really think that was so.
You must change. You get tired over time; you spend your originality in one area. You need to find something nearby. I do not say that you switch from music to theoretical physics, and there to English literature; I mean that in your field you should switch between areas so as not to stagnate. It is impossible to force a switch every seven years, but if it were possible, I would make it a condition for research work - so that you change your field of study every seven or ten years; management has the power to make you change. I would insist on change, because this is serious. After all, what happens to people - they turn out some method and continue to use it. They are walking in the direction that was right then, but the world is changing. Already have a new direction,but the old men are still striding that old side.
You need to be in a new area to get new points of view, and better before you spend all the old ones. You can work on it, but it takes effort and energy. It takes courage to say: "Yes, I will give up my great reputation." For example, when error correction codes were issued, I said, "Hamming, now you will try to do something other than rest in this area." I deliberately refused to continue working in this area. I did not even read the publication to force myself to do something else. I controlled myself - which is what I teach in this entire lecture. Knowing many of my faults, I control myself. I have many shortcomings, so I have a lot of problems - that is, opportunities for management.
Question : How do you compare research and management?
Hamming: If you want to be a great explorer, you will not become them, being the president of the company. Another thing, if you want to be president of the company. I do not mind being a company president. I just do not want. I think Ian Ross does a good job as president of Bell Labs. I'm not against it; but you must clearly understand what you want. Even when you are young, you may want to be a great scientist, but after living more, you can change your mind. For example, I once went to my boss, Boda, and asked: “Why did you even become head of the department? Why didn't you just stay a good scientist? ”He replied:“ Hamming, I had a vision of what mathematics should be at Bell Laboratories. And I understood that for this vision to come true, I had to do it; I was supposed to be the head of the department. ” When you can single-handedly embody thatwhatever you want, then you should do it. Once your vision of what you think should be done, more than what you can do alone, you need to move into management. And the bigger the vision, the further you need to go into management. If you have a vision of what the whole lab or the whole Bell System should be, you have to go there to do it. You cannot do this easily from below.You cannot do this easily from below.You cannot do this easily from below.
It depends on your goals and desires. And as they change in your life, you must be ready to change. I chose to avoid management because I preferred to do what I can do alone. But this is a choice that I made, and it is subjective. Everyone has the right to their own choice. Let your mind be open. But when you choose the path, for the sake of all that is holy, be aware of what you have done and what you have decided. Do not try to do both.
Question : How important are your own expectations for yourself or how important is it to be surrounded by people who expect excellent work from you?
Hamming : At Bell Labs, everyone was expecting a good job from me. It helped a lot. Everyone is waiting for you to do a good job, so you do it. I think it is very valuable to have around top-notch people. I sought out the best people. As soon as the table of physicists in the dining room lost the best people, I left. As soon as I saw that the same thing happened with the chemists' table, I left. I tried to be with people with great abilities so that I could learn from them, with people who expected excellent results from me. Thoughtfully controlling myself, I think I would have achieved much better than if I had left the matter alone.
Question: At the beginning of the conversation you have lowered the role of luck but you also seem to have missed the circumstances that led you to Los Alamos, Chicago, Bell Laboratories.
Hamming: There was some luck. On the other hand, I do not know the alternative branches of development. Until you can say that the other branches would not be equally or more successful, I can not say. Is the particular thing you are doing good luck? For example, when I met Feynman in Los Alamos, I knew that he would receive the Nobel Prize. I did not know why. But I knew very well that he would do an excellent job. No matter what directions the future would have appeared, this person would have done an excellent job. And for sure - he did an excellent job. It is not that you did a little excellent work in specific circumstances, and it was good luck; there are many opportunities sooner or later. There is a whole tub full of possibilities, from which, if you are in such a situation, you pull one and you are good at one instead of something else. There is an element of luck. Yes and no. ; . . , . , , .
Go and do a great job!
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/209100/
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