Richard Hamming
Richard Hamming
Richard Wesley Hammingwas an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer engineering and telecommunications. His contributions include the Hamming code, the Hamming window, Hamming numbers, sphere-packing, and the Hamming distance...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth11 February 1915
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
feet computer scientist
Computer scientists stand on each other's feet.
greatness names letters
True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier-when it's spelled with a lower case letter.
hard-work different way
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.
hard-work doors important
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.
believe airplane differences
Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.
inspirational thinking creative
The most dangerous thought you can have as a creative person is to think you know what you’re doing.
successful scientist characteristics
One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage.
use
What you learn from others you can use to follow. What you learn for yourself you can use to lead.
teacher doors apples
Good teachers deserve apples; great teachers deserve chocolate. A favorite quotation, written in calligraphy on his office door.
guessing littles results
If the prior distribution, at which I am frankly guessing, has little or no effect on the result, then why bother; and if it has a large effect, then since I do not know what I am doing how would I dare act on the conclusions drawn?
important fields problem
What are the important problems of your field?
engineering numbers way
Science is concerned with what is possible while engineering is concerned with choosing, from among the many possible ways, one that meets a number of often poorly stated economic and practical objectives.
teacher thinking class
Most of the time each person is immersed in the details of one special part of the whole and does not think of how what they are doing relates to the larger picture. For example, in education, a teacher might say in the next class he was going to "explain Young's modulus and how to measure it," rather than, "I am going to educate the students and prepare them for their future careers".
important example why-not
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.