31 Hamming, Learning to Learn: You and Your Research, 6 June 1995

Richard Hamming delivers his famous lecture on how to do important work, choose significant problems, and build a successful research career.

I have given a talk with this title many times, and it turns out from discussions after the talk I could have just as well have called it "You and Your Engineering Career," or even "You and Your Career." But I left the word "Research" in the title because that is what I have most studied. From the previous chapters you have an adequate background for how I made the study, and I need not mention again the names of the famous people I have studied closely. The earlier chapters are, in sense, just a great expansion, with much more detail, of the original talk. This chapter is, in a sense, a summary of the previous chapters. 00:00 Introduction 03:15 Hamming’s experience 06:05 Newton observed...if other people fought as had as he did they would get the same results 10:30 Great people believe they can do great work 15:53 You have to work on problems which can become important 18:30 Working with your door closed or open 24:56 You have to make success either by inverting the problem or changing the problem 28:07 The race is not to the swiftest 30:25 Fundamentals 35:30 What aspects of the speaker can you adapt? 39:46 Earning the freedom to work 41:10 Is the effort to be a great person worth it? 44:23 End * NPS Hamming portal: nps.edu/hamming * NPS course site: cle.nps.edu/portal/site/hamming