Transcript of a talk given by Dr. Richard Hamming

Since I am stuck out here in the middle of nowhere in this perfect republican hell, I am not in a position to hear talks by interesting people without huge effort. Unless it happens to be on the Internet, of course. Even so, finding something actually rewarding on the Internet instead of merely interesting is hit and miss. So when I come across something I think is valuable there is likely (in this new world) to be a post about it, so I can find it again.

Here is a transciption of a talk given by Dr. Richard Hamming at Bell Core in Murray Hill, NJ in 1986 on the topic of "You and Your Research". A better title might be, "How to do great work" or it might even be, "How I, Richard Hamming, did great work".

Be that as it may be, its a quick read and I found it entertaining and possibly even useful.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dsb/Inspiration/hamming.pdf

If you don't know what a Hamming code is, you should, and you can read about it here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_code