“10 Simple Rules for Doing Your Best Research, According to Hamming”, Thomas C. Erren, Paul Cullen, Michael Erren, Philip E. Bourne2007-10 (; backlinks)⁠:

…The thoughts presented are not our own; rather, we condense and annotate some excellent and timeless suggestions made by the mathematician Richard Hamming two decades ago on how to do “first-class research”. As far as we know, the transcript of the Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar provided by Dr. Kaiser was never formally published, so that Dr. Hamming’s thoughts are not as widely known as they deserve to be. By distilling these thoughts into something that can be thought of as “10 Simple Rules”, we hope to bring these ideas to broader attention.

Hamming’s1986 talk was remarkable. In “You and Your Research”, he addressed the question: How can scientists do great research, ie. Nobel-Prize-type work? His insights were based on more than 40 years of research as a pioneer of computer science and telecommunications who had the privilege of interacting with such luminaries as the physicists Richard Feynman, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Robert Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, and Walter Brattain, with Claude Shannon, “the father of information theory”, and with the statistician John Tukey. Hamming “became very interested in the difference between those who do and those who might have done”, and he offered a number of answers to the question “why . . . so few scientists make important contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?” We have condensed Hamming’s talk into the 10 rules listed below:

  1. Drop Modesty
  2. Prepare Your Mind
  3. Age Is Important
  4. Brains Are Not Enough, You Also Need Courage
  5. Make the Best of Your Working Conditions
  6. Work Hard and Effectively
  7. Believe & Doubt Your Hypothesis at the Same Time
  8. Work on the Important Problems in Your Field
  9. Be Committed to Your Problem
  10. Leave Your Door Open