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Hamming, "You and Your Research" (June 6, 1995)

securitylectures · 368.7K views · 2012-08-26 · 44:19

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Overview

Richard Hamming's 1995 recording of his talk 'You and Your Research', drawn from his graduate engineering course. He discusses how great scientists pick important problems and build careers, drawing on his years at Bell Labs.

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HN recommends it as career and research advice on choosing important problems and doing first-class work.

Recommended by 11 HN people across 10 months · HN mentions 2012–2023

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What people said

gumby · 2019-01 · Strong recommendation

Richard Hamming: You and Your Research It's on picking the right problems. When I heard him give it I was shocked that he criticized Einstein for working on a unified field theory (of course unlike me, he was actually qualified to offer such criticism). His point for that example was that the necessary tools to attack the problem hadn't yet been developed so it was a fruitless endeavor. While many very important problems are tractable. [VIDEO] He gave this talk several times (I heard it at NASA in 84). Here's a good transcript: [LINK]

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f00_ · 2018-01 · Strong recommendation

Richard Hamming developed error-correcting codes while working along side Shannon at bell labs, his book The Art and Science of Engineering: Learning to Learn and the associated lectures he gave at the naval postgraduate academy are tremendous [VIDEO]

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jgalt212 · 2016-04 · Strong recommendation

It's been posted here before, but Hamming's talk "You and Your Research" is one for the ages. [VIDEO] Hamming passed in 1998, this talk was given about three years earlier. So much sage advice as compiled over a very long and fruitful career.

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Sources

Video by securitylectures, played through YouTube.

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