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Richard Hamming
(11 Feb 1915 - 7 Jan 1998)
American computer scientist and mathematician who invented Hamming codes - computer error-detecting and correcting codes.
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If you don’t work on important problems, it’s not likely that you'll do important work.
— Richard Hamming
As quoted in obituary for Richard Hamming, by Herschel H. Loomis and David S. Potter, in National Academy of Engineering, Memorial Tributes (2002), 123.
It is better to do the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way.
— Richard Hamming
Quoted in Julie K. Petersen, Fiber Optics Illustrated Dictionary (2003), 435.
Often the great scientists, by turning the problem around a bit, changed a defect to an asset. For example, many scientists when they found they couldn't do a problem finally began to study why not. They then turned it around the other way and said, “But of course, this is what it is” and got an important result.
— Richard Hamming
'You and Your Research', Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar, 7 Mar 1986.
One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
— Richard Hamming
'You and Your Research', Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar, 7 Mar 1986.
Perhaps the central problem we face in all of computer science is how we are to get to the situation where we build on top of the work of others rather than redoing so much of it in a trivially different way.
— Richard Hamming
From Turing Award lecture (1968), 'One Man's View of Computer Science', collected in ACM Turing Award Lectures: The First Twenty Years, 1966 to 1985 (1987), 216. ACM is the Association for Computing Machinery. The lecture is also published in Journal of the ACM (Jan 1969), 16, No. 1, 10.
When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] 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
'You and Your Research', Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar, 7 Mar 1986.
See also:
- 11 Feb - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Hamming's birth.
- Richard Hamming - context of quote “Engineering is concerned with choosing, from among the many possible ways” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
- Richard Hamming - context of quote “Engineering is concerned with choosing, from among the many possible ways” - Large image (800 x 600 px)
- Richard Hamming - context of quote “Mathematics is an interesting intellectual sport” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
- Richard Hamming - context of quote “Mathematics is an interesting intellectual sport” - Large image (800 x 600 px)
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
