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. In fact I will give you my favorite quotation of many years. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after.

Recorded · Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar, Morristown, New Jersey, Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar (transcription hosted by the University of Virginia Department of Computer Science), 7 March 1986 · source

I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.

Recorded · Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar, Morristown, New Jersey, Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar (transcription hosted by the University of Virginia Department of Computer Science), 7 March 1986 · source

I have now come down to a topic which is very distasteful; it is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. 'Selling' to a scientist is an awkward thing to do. It's very ugly; you shouldn't have to do it. The world is supposed to be waiting, and when you do something great, they should rush out and welcome it. But the fact is everyone is busy with their own work. You must present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what you've done, read it, and come back and say, "Yes, that was good."

Recorded · Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar, Morristown, New Jersey, Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar (transcription hosted by the University of Virginia Department of Computer Science), 7 March 1986 · source

I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, "How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?" He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, "You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years." I simply slunk out of the office!

Recorded · Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar, Morristown, New Jersey, Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar (transcription hosted by the University of Virginia Department of Computer Science), 7 March 1986 · source