Richard Hamming > Quotes

“What you learn from others you can use to follow.
What you learn for yourself you can use to lead.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers.”
― Richard Hamming

“When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.”
― Richard Hamming

“Beware of finding what you're looking for.

[A favorite aphorism he often used.]”
― Richard Hamming

“Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance.”
― Richard Hamming, You and Your Research

“I need to discuss science vs. engineering. Put glibly:
In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it.
In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier—when it's spelled with a lower case letter.”
― Richard Hamming

“If you don’t work on important problems, it’s not likely that you'll do important work.”
― Richard Hamming

“Vicarious learning from the experiences of others saves making errors yourself, but I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the study of failures. There are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more efficient.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Newton said, 'If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants.' These days we stand on each other's feet!”
― Richard W. Hamming

“Moral: to the extent you can choose, work on problems you think will be important.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“It is not easy to become an educated person.”
― Richard Hamming, Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics

“The applications of knowledge, especially mathematics, reveal the unity of all knowledge. In a new situation almost anything and everything you ever learned might be applicable, and the artificial divisions seem to vanish.”
― Richard Hamming, Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics

“Teachers should prepare the student for the student’s future, not for the teacher’s past.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“The reason this happens so often is the creators have to fight through so many dark difficulties, and wade through so much misunderstanding and confusion, they cannot see the light as others can, now the door is open and the path made easy. Please remember, the inventor often has a very limited view of what he invented, and some others (you?) can see much more.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“The Buddha told his disciples, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” I say the same to you—you must assume the responsibility for what you believe.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“If you cannot drop a wrong problem, then the first time you meet one you will be stuck with it for the rest of your career. Einstein was tremendously creative in his early years, but once he began, in midlife, the search for a unified theory, he spent the rest of his life on it and had about nothing to show for all the effort. I have seen this many times while watching how science is done. It is most likely to happen to the very creative people; their previous successes convince them they can solve any problem, but there are other reasons besides overconfidence why, in many fields, sterility sets in with advancing age. Managing a creative career is not an easy task, or else it would often be done. In mathematics, theoretical physics, and astrophysics, age seems to be a handicap (all characterized by high, raw creativity), while in music composition, literature, and statesmanship, age and experience seem to be an asset. As valued by Bell Telephone Laboratories in the late 1970s, the first 15 years of my career included all they listed, and for my second 15 years they listed nothing I was very closely associated with! Yes, in my areas the really great things are generally done while the person is young, much as in athletics, and in old age you can turn to coaching (teaching), as I have done. Of course, I do not know your field of expertise to say what effect age will have, but I suspect really great things will be realized fairly young, though it may take years to get them into practice. My advice is if you want to do significant things, now is the time to start thinking (if you have not already done so) and not wait until it is the proper moment—which may never arrive!”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.”
― Richard W. Hamming

“It is well known the drunken sailor who staggers to the left or right with n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about √n steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a career with a vision will get you a distance proportional to n, while no vision will get you only the distance √n. In a sense, the main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen.”
― Richard Hamming

“Assuming you rise to the top, please remember: what made you great may not be appropriate for the next generation.”
― Richard Hamming

“I must address the topic of whether the effort required for excellence worth it. I believe it is—the chief gain is in the effort to change yourself, in the struggle with yourself, and it is less in the winning than you might expect. Yes, it is nice to end up where you wanted to be, but the person you are when you get there is far more important. I believe a life in which you do not try to extend yourself regularly is not worth living—but it is up to you to pick the goals you believe are worth striving for.”
― Richard Hamming, You and Your Research

“In closing I want to remind you yet again of Pasteur’s remark, “Luck favors the prepared mind.” Yes, it is a matter of luck just what you do; it is much less luck you will do something if you prepare yourself to succeed. “Creativity” is just another name for the great successes which make a difference in history.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“A second reason the systems engineer’s design is never completed is the solution offered to the original problem usually produces both deeper insight and dissatisfactions in the engineers themselves. Furthermore, while the design phase continually goes from proposed solution to evaluation and back again and again, there comes a time when this process of redefinement must stop and the real problem be coped with—thus giving what they realize is, in the long run, a suboptimal solution.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Almost everyone who opens up a new field does not really understand it the way the followers do.” The evidence for this is, unfortunately, all too good. It has been said in physics no creator of any significant thing ever understood what he had done.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“If you will only ask yourself, "Is what I am being told really true?," it is amazing how much you can find is, or borders on, being false, even in a well-developed field!”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Westerman believes, as I do, that while the client has some knowledge of his symptoms, he may not understand the real causes of them, and it is foolish to try to cure the symptoms only. Thus while the systems engineers must listen to the client, they should also try to extract from the client a deeper understanding of the phenomena. Therefore, part of the job of a systems engineer is to define, in a deeper sense, what the problem is and to pass from the symptoms to the causes. Just as there is no definite system within which the solution is to be found, and the boundaries of the problem are elastic and tend to expand with each round of solution, so too there is often no final solution, yet each cycle of input and solution is worth the effort. A solution which does not prepare for the next round with some increased insight is hardly a solution at all. I suppose the heart of systems engineering is the acceptance that there is neither a definite fixed problem nor a final solution, rather evolution is the natural state of affairs. This is, of course, not what you learn in school, where you are given definite problems which have definite solutions.”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“Just as there are odors that dogs can smell and we cannot, as well as sounds that dogs can hear and we cannot, so too there are wavelengths of light we cannot see and flavors we cannot taste. Why then, given our brains wired the way they are, does the remark "Perhaps there are thoughts we cannot think," surprise you? Evolution, so far, may possibly have blocked us from being able to think in some directions; there could be unthinkable thoughts.”
― Richard Hamming, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics

“In forming your plan for your future you need to distinguish three different questions: What is possible? What is likely to happen? What is desirable to have happen?”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“While the problem of ai can be viewed as, “Which of all the things humans do can machines also do?,” I would prefer to ask the question in another form: “Of all of life’s burdens, which are those machines can relieve, or significantly ease, for us?”
― Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

“I had incipient ulcers most of the years that I was at Bell Labs. I have since gone off to the Naval Postgraduate School and laid back somewhat, and now my health is much better. But if you want to be a great scientist you’re going to have to put up with stress. You can lead a nice life; you can be a nice guy or you can be a great scientist. But nice guys end last, is what Leo Durocher said. If you want to lead a nice happy life with a lot of recreation and everything else, you’ll lead a nice life.”
― Richard Hamming