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