成为一流科学家 | 理查德·汉明的洞察与建议

注：英文引文，机翻未校。
略作重排，如有内容异常，请看原文。

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You and Your Research

你与你的研究

Richard Hamming

Transcription of the Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar
7 March 1986

J. F. Kaiser
Bell Communications Research
445 South Street
Morristown, NJ 07962-1910
jfk@bellcore.com

At a seminar in the Bell Communications Research Colloquia Series, Dr. Richard W. Hamming, a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a retired Bell Labs scientist, gave a very interesting and stimulating talk, `You and Your Research’ to an overflow audience of some 200 Bellcore staff members and visitors at the Morris Research and Engineering Center on March 7, 1986. This talk centered on Hamming’s observations and research on the question``Why do so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?‘’ From his more than forty years of experience, thirty of which were at Bell Laboratories, he has made a number of direct observations, asked very pointed questions of scientists about what, how, and why they did things, studied the lives of great scientists and great contributions, and has done introspection and studied theories of creativity. The talk is about what he has learned in terms of the properties of the individual scientists, their abilities, traits, working habits, attitudes, and philosophy.

在贝尔通信研究研讨会系列中，加利福尼亚州蒙特雷海军研究生院的教授、已退休的贝尔实验室科学家理查德・W・汉明博士，于 1986 年 3 月 7 日在莫里斯研究中心向大约 200 名贝尔核心员工和访客发表了题为 “你和你的研究” 的非常有趣且富有启发性的演讲。此次演讲围绕汉明对 “为什么如此少的科学家做出了重大贡献，而如此多的人最终被遗忘？” 这一问题的观察和研究展开。凭借他在贝尔实验室工作三十年的四十多年经验，他进行了许多直接的观察，向科学家们提出了关于他们所做事情的什么、如何以及为什么的非常尖锐的问题，研究了伟大科学家和伟大贡献的生活，并进行了自我反省和对创造力理论的研究。这次演讲是关于他所学到的关于个体科学家的属性、能力、特质、工作习惯、态度和哲学。

In order to make the information in the talk more widely available, the tape recording that was made of that talk was carefully transcribed. This transcription includes the discussions which followed in the question and answer period. As with any talk, the transcribed version suffers from translation as all the inflections of voice and the gestures of the speaker are lost; one must listen to the tape recording to recapture that part of the presentation. While the recording of Richard Hamming’s talk was completely intelligible, that of some of the questioner’s remarks were not. Where the tape recording was not intelligible I have added in parentheses my impression of the questioner’s remarks. Where there was a question and I could identify the questioner, I have checked with each to ensure the accuracy of my interpretation of their remarks.

为了使演讲中的信息能更广泛地传播，对那次演讲所做的录音被仔细地转录了下来。这份转录包括了随后在问答环节中的讨论。和任何演讲一样，转录版本在翻译过程中有所损失，因为演讲者的语调和手势都丢失了；人们必须听录音才能重新捕捉到演讲的那部分表现。尽管理查德・汉明的演讲录音完全可以理解，但有些提问者的评论却不能。在录音不清楚的地方，我在括号内加上了我对提问者评论的印象。如果有问题并且我能确认提问者，我已与他们一一核对，以确保我对他们评论的解释准确无误。

INTRODUCTION OF DR. RICHARD W. HAMMING
理查德・w・汉明博士简介

As a speaker in the Bell Communications Research Colloquium Series, Dr. Richard W. Hamming of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, was introduced by Alan G. Chynoweth, Vice President, Applied Research, Bell Communications Research.

作为贝尔通信研究研讨会系列的演讲者，加利福尼亚州蒙特雷海军研究生院的理查德・W・汉明博士由贝尔通信研究应用研究副总裁艾伦・G・奇诺思介绍。

Alan G. Chynoweth: Greetings colleagues, and also to many of our former colleagues from Bell Labs who, I understand, are here to be with us today on what I regard as a particularly felicitous occasion. It gives me very great pleasure indeed to introduce to you my old friend and colleague from many many years back, Richard Hamming, or Dick Hamming as he has always been know to all of us.

艾伦・G・奇诺思：同事们，还有许多我们贝尔实验室的前同事们，我知道你们今天都在这里，这是一个特别令人高兴的场合。我非常高兴地向你们介绍我多年前的老朋友和同事，理查德・汉明，或者说迪克・汉明，这是我们大家一直以来对他的称呼。

Dick is one of the all time greats in the mathematics and computer science arenas, as I’m sure the audience here does not need reminding. He received his early education at the Universities of Chicago and Nebraska, and got his Ph.D. at Illinois; he then joined the Los Alamos project during the war. Afterwards, in 1946, he joined Bell Labs. And that is, of course, where I met Dick - when I joined Bell Labs in their physics research organization. In those days, we were in the habit of lunching together as a physics group, and for some reason this strange fellow from mathematics was always pleased to join us. We were always happy to have him with us because he brought so many unorthodox ideas and views. Those lunches were stimulating, I can assure you.

迪克是数学和计算机科学领域有史以来最伟大的人物之一，我想在座的各位也不需要我再提醒了。他在芝加哥大学和内布拉斯加大学接受了早期教育，并在伊利诺伊大学获得了博士学位；然后他在战争期间加入了洛斯阿拉莫斯项目。后来，在 1946 年，他加入了贝尔实验室。当然，这也是我认识迪克的地方 —— 当我加入贝尔实验室的物理研究组织时。在那些日子里，我们习惯于作为一个物理小组一起吃午饭，不知何故，这个来自数学领域的奇怪家伙总是很乐意加入我们。我们总是很高兴有他在，因为他带来了许多非传统的想法和观点。我可以向你保证，那些午餐时间令人振奋。

While our professional paths have not been very close over the years, nevertheless I’ve always recognized Dick in the halls of Bell Labs and have always had tremendous admiration for what he was doing. I think the record speaks for itself. It is too long to go through all the details, but let me point out, for example, that he has written seven books and of those seven books which tell of various areas of mathematics and computers and coding and information theory, three are already well into their second edition. That is testimony indeed to the prolific output and the stature of Dick Hamming.

尽管多年来我们的职业道路并不十分接近，但我总是在贝尔实验室的走廊里认出迪克，并且一直非常钦佩他的所作所为。我想他的记录本身就说明了问题。细节太多，无法一一列举，但让我指出，例如，他写了七本书，这七本书涵盖了数学、计算机、编码和信息论等各个领域，其中三本已经出到了第二版。这确实证明了迪克・汉明的高产和地位。

I think I last met him - it must have been about ten years ago - at a rather curious little conference in Dublin, Ireland where we were both speakers. As always, he was tremendously entertaining. Just one more example of the provocative thoughts that he comes up with: I remember him saying, ``There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think.‘’ Well, with Dick Hamming around, we don’t need a computer. I think that we are in for an extremely entertaining talk.

我想我最后一次见到他 —— 那一定是十年前左右 —— 在爱尔兰都柏林的一个相当奇怪的小型会议上，我们都是演讲者。和往常一样，他非常有趣。他提出的那些挑衅性想法又是一个例子：我记得他说过，“人们看不到某些波长，听不到某些声音，也许计算机也有人们无法思考的思想。” 有迪克・汉明在，我们就不需要计算机了。我想我们将迎来一场非常有趣的演讲。为了使演讲中的信息能更广泛地传播，对那次演讲所做的录音被仔细地转录了下来。这份转录包括了随后在问答环节中的讨论。和任何演讲一样，转录版本在翻译过程中有所损失，因为演讲者的语调和手势都丢失了；人们必须听录音才能重新捕捉到演讲的那部分表现。尽管理查德・汉明的演讲录音完全可以理解，但有些提问者的评论却不能。在录音不清楚的地方，我在括号内加上了我对提问者评论的印象。如果有问题并且我能确认提问者，我已与他们一一核对，以确保我对他们评论的解释准确无误。

THE TALK: ‘‘You and Your Research’’

by Dr. Richard W. Hamming

演讲：《你和你的研究》

It’s a pleasure to be here. I doubt if I can live up to the Introduction. The title of my talk is, ``You and Your Research.‘’ It is not about managing research, it is about how you individually do your research. I could give a talk on the other subject - but it’s not, it’s about you. I’m not talking about ordinary run-of-the-mill research; I’m talking about great research. And for the sake of describing great research I’ll occasionally say Nobel-Prize type of work. It doesn’t have to gain the Nobel Prize, but I mean those kinds of things which we perceive are significant things. Relativity, if you want, Shannon’s information theory, any number of outstanding theories - that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.

能在这里和大家交流，我感到非常高兴。我不确定我是否能够达到前面介绍我的那个人的期望。我演讲的题目是 “你和你的研究”。这不是关于如何管理研究，而是关于你个人如何进行研究。我也可以就另一个主题发表演讲 —— 但不是，而是关于你。我不是在谈论普通的、平庸的研究；我在谈论伟大的研究。为了描述伟大的研究，我偶尔会提到诺贝尔奖级别的工作。这并不一定意味着要获得诺贝尔奖，而是指那些我们认为意义重大的事情。如果你愿意，可以是相对论，也可以是香农的信息论，或者是任何数量的杰出理论 —— 这就是我在谈论的那种事情。

Now, how did I come to do this study? At Los Alamos I was brought in to run the computing machines which other people had got going, so those scientists and physicists could get back to business. I saw I was a stooge. I saw that although physically I was the same, they were different. And to put the thing bluntly, I was envious. I wanted to know why they were so different from me. I saw Feynman up close. I saw Fermi and Teller. I saw Oppenheimer. I saw Hans Bethe: he was my boss. I saw quite a few very capable people. I became very interested in the difference between those who do and those who might have done.

那么，我是如何开始这项研究的呢？在洛斯阿拉莫斯，我被请来运行其他人启动的计算机，这样那些科学家和物理学家就可以回到他们的工作中。我意识到自己是个跑腿的。我看到，尽管从身体上来说我和他们并无二致，但他们就是不一样。直白地说，我嫉妒他们。我想知道他们为什么和我如此不同。我近距离观察了费曼。我看到了费米和泰勒。我看到了奥本海默。我看到了汉斯・贝特：他是我的上司。我看到了许多非常有能力的人。我开始对那些真正做出了成果的人和那些本可以做出成果但却没有做出成果的人之间的差异产生了浓厚的兴趣。

When I came to Bell Labs, I came into a very productive department. Bode was the department head at the time; Shannon was there, and there were other people. I continued examining the questions, Why?‘’ and What is the difference?‘’ I continued subsequently by reading biographies, autobiographies, asking people questions such as: ``How did you come to do this?‘’ I tried to find out what are the differences. And that’s what this talk is about.

当我来到贝尔实验室时，我加入了一个成果丰硕的部门。博德当时是部门负责人；香农在那里，还有其他一些人。我继续审视这些问题：“为什么？” 以及 “有什么不同？” 随后，我通过阅读传记、自传，向人们提出诸如 “你是如何做到这一点的？” 之类的问题，继续探索这些问题。我试图找出其中的差异。而这，就是我今天演讲的主题。

Now, why is this talk important? I think it is important because, as far as I know, each of you has one life to live. Even if you believe in reincarnation it doesn’t do you any good from one life to the next! Why shouldn’t you do significant things in this one life, however you define significant? I’m not going to define it - you know what I mean. I will talk mainly about science because that is what I have studied. But so far as I know, and I’ve been told by others, much of what I say applies to many fields. Outstanding work is characterized very much the same way in most fields, but I will confine myself to science.

那么，为什么这个演讲很重要呢？我认为它很重要，因为据我所知，你们每个人只有一辈子可活。即使你相信轮回转世，这也对你从这一生到下一世没有任何帮助！为什么你不应该在这一生中做一些意义重大的事情，不管你如何定义 “重大”？我不打算定义它 —— 你知道我的意思。我将主要谈论科学，因为这就是我所研究的领域。据我所知，也有人告诉过我，我所说的很多内容适用于许多领域。在大多数领域，杰出的工作都有着非常相似的特征，但我将局限于谈论科学。

In order to get at you individually, I must talk in the first person. I have to get you to drop modesty and say to yourself, Yes, I would like to do first-class work.‘’ Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good work. You’re not supposed to; luck is supposed to descend on you and you do great things by chance. Well, that’s a kind of dumb thing to say. I say, why shouldn’t you set out to do something significant. You don’t have to tell other people, but shouldn’t you say to yourself, Yes, I would like to do something significant.‘’

为了触及你个人，我必须用第一人称来谈。我必须让你放下谦逊，对自己说：“是的，我想做出一流的工作。” 我们的社会并不看好那些立志要做出真正出色工作的人。你不应该这样做；据说运气会降临到你身上，让你偶然做出伟大的事情。嗯，这样说有点愚蠢。我说，为什么你不立志去做一些意义重大的事情呢。你不必告诉别人，但你不应该对自己说：“是的，我想做一些意义重大的事情。”

In order to get to the second stage, I have to drop modesty and talk in the first person about what I’ve seen, what I’ve done, and what I’ve heard. I’m going to talk about people, some of whom you know, and I trust that when we leave, you won’t quote me as saying some of the things I said.

为了达到第二阶段，我必须放下谦逊，用第一人称来谈谈我所看到的、我所做过的以及我所听到的事情。我会谈到一些你认识的人，我相信当我们离开时，你不会引用我说过的一些话。

Let me start not logically, but psychologically. I find that the major objection is that people think great science is done by luck. It’s all a matter of luck. Well, consider Einstein. Note how many different things he did that were good. Was it all luck? Wasn’t it a little too repetitive? Consider Shannon. He didn’t do just information theory. Several years before, he did some other good things and some which are still locked up in the security of cryptography. He did many good things.

让我从心理层面而非逻辑层面开始。我发现主要的反对意见是人们认为伟大的科学发现是靠运气得来的。一切都是运气使然。那么，想想爱因斯坦吧。注意他是多么多地做出了不同的出色成果。这全是运气吗？难道不是有点过于重复了吗？再想想香农。他做的不仅仅是信息论。几年前，他还做出了一些其他出色的事情，其中一些至今仍被密码学的安全性所封锁。他做出了许多出色的事情。

You see again and again, that it is more than one thing from a good person. Once in a while a person does only one thing in his whole life, and we’ll talk about that later, but a lot of times there is repetition. I claim that luck will not cover everything. And I will cite Pasteur who said, ``Luck favors the prepared mind.‘’ And I think that says it the way I believe it. There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn’t. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not.

你一次又一次地看到，一个优秀的人做出的不止是一样东西。偶尔，一个人在他的一生中只做了一件事，我们稍后会谈到这一点，但很多时候，会有重复。我主张运气无法涵盖一切。我将引用巴斯德的话：“运气青睐有准备的头脑。” 我认为这正是我的观点。的确存在运气的成分，但又不存在。有准备的头脑迟早会发现一些重要的事情并去完成它。所以，是的，这是运气。你所做的那件特定的事情是运气，但你能做成某件事却不是。

For example, when I came to Bell Labs, I shared an office for a while with Shannon. At the same time he was doing information theory, I was doing coding theory. It is suspicious that the two of us did it at the same place and at the same time - it was in the atmosphere. And you can say, Yes, it was luck.‘’ On the other hand you can say, But why of all the people in Bell Labs then were those the two who did it?‘’ Yes, it is partly luck, and partly it is the prepared mind; but ‘partly’ is the other thing I’m going to talk about. So, although I’ll come back several more times to luck, I want to dispose of this matter of luck as being the sole criterion whether you do great work or not. I claim you have some, but not total, control over it. And I will quote, finally, Newton on the matter. Newton said, "If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.‘’

例如，当我来到贝尔实验室时，我曾和香农共用过一段时间的办公室。就在他从事信息论研究的同时，我正在从事编码理论的研究。我们两人在同一时间、同一地点做这些事情，这看起来很可疑 —— 这是当时的氛围使然。你可以这样说：“是的，这是运气。” 但另一方面，你也可以问：“为什么在贝尔实验室的所有人中，偏偏是我们两个人做到了呢？” 是的，这既有运气的成分，也有头脑准备充分的因素；不过，“部分” 是我要讲的另一个内容。所以，尽管我还会多次回到运气这个话题，但我想要消除这种把运气当作你能否做出伟大工作的唯一标准的看法。我主张你对运气有一定的但不是完全的掌控。最后，我要引用牛顿的话来说明这个问题。牛顿说：“如果其他人能像我一样努力思考，那么他们也会得到类似的结果。”

One of the characteristics you see, and many people have it including great scientists, is that usually when they were young they had independent thoughts and had the courage to pursue them. For example, Einstein, somewhere around 12 or 14, asked himself the question, ``What would a light wave look like if I went with the velocity of light to look at it?‘’ Now he knew that electromagnetic theory says you cannot have a stationary local maximum. But if he moved along with the velocity of light, he would see a local maximum. He could see a contradiction at the age of 12, 14, or somewhere around there, that everything was not right and that the velocity of light had something peculiar. Is it luck that he finally created special relativity? Early on, he had laid down some of the pieces by thinking of the fragments. Now that’s the necessary but not sufficient condition. All of these items I will talk about are both luck and not luck.

你看到的一个特点是，包括伟大的科学家在内的很多人都具备这个特点，那就是他们通常在年轻的时候就有一些独立的想法，并且有勇气去追求它们。例如，爱因斯坦在大约 12 岁或 14 岁的时候，问了自己一个问题：“如果我以光速去观察，光波会是什么样子呢？” 当时他就知道，电磁理论认为不可能存在一个静止的局部最大值。但如果他以光速移动，他就会看到一个局部最大值。他在 12 岁、14 岁或差不多这个年龄的时候，就看到了一个矛盾，即事情并不完全正确，光速有些奇特。他最终创立了狭义相对论，这难道只是运气吗？早在那个时候，他就通过思考这些片段，奠定了其中的一些基础。这是必要条件，但不是充分条件。我接下来要讲的这些内容，既与运气有关，也与运气无关。

How about having lots of `brains?’ It sounds good. Most of you in this room probably have more than enough brains to do first-class work. But great work is something else than mere brains. Brains are measured in various ways. In mathematics, theoretical physics, astrophysics, typically brains correlates to a great extent with the ability to manipulate symbols. And so the typical IQ test is apt to score them fairly high. On the other hand, in other fields it is something different. For example, Bill Pfann, the fellow who did zone melting, came into my office one day. He had this idea dimly in his mind about what he wanted and he had some equations. It was pretty clear to me that this man didn’t know much mathematics and he wasn’t really articulate. His problem seemed interesting so I took it home and did a little work. I finally showed him how to run computers so he could compute his own answers. I gave him the power to compute. He went ahead, with negligible recognition from his own department, but ultimately he has collected all the prizes in the field. Once he got well started, his shyness, his awkwardness, his inularticateness, fell away and he became much more productive in many other ways. Certainly he became much more articulate.

“多一点‘聪明才智’如何？听起来不错。在座的各位很可能都拥有足够的才智去做一流的工作。“但卓越的成就却并非单靠聪明就能得到。才智的衡量有许多方式。在数学、理论物理、天体物理这样的领域，才智往往很大程度上就等同于操弄符号的能力。所以一般的智商测试常常会给他们打出很高的分数。但在其他领域，情形却并非如此。比如，比尔・范恩（Bill Pfann），就是那个发明区熔法的人，有一天走进我的办公室。他心里隐隐有个想法，想做点什么，也写下了一些方程。从他的表述我能看出，他数学知识并不丰富，也不善言辞。他的问题倒挺有意思，于是我拿回家想了想，做了一些功课。后来我教他如何使用计算机，让他自己能算出结果 —— 我把这种力量交到了他手里。他继续工作，自己系里几乎没人注意他，可最后他把该领域的所有奖项都拿了个遍。等他真正上路后，那种羞怯、笨拙、词不达意都烟消云散，他在很多方面变得更加高产。当然，他也变得更善于表达了。”

And I can cite another person in the same way. I trust he isn’t in the audience, i.e. a fellow named Clogston. I met him when I was working on a problem with John Pierce’s group and I didn’t think he had much. I asked my friends who had been with him at school, Was he like that in graduate school?‘’ Yes,‘’ they replied. Well I would have fired the fellow, but J. R. Pierce was smart and kept him on. Clogston finally did the Clogston cable. After that there was a steady stream of good ideas. One success brought him confidence and courage.

我还可以以同样的方式提到另一个人。我相信他不在听众之中，也就是一个叫克洛斯顿的人。我在和约翰・皮尔斯的团队一起解决一个问题时遇到了他，当时我认为他并没有什么特别之处。我问和他在学校一起学习过的朋友：“他在研究生阶段也是这样吗？”“是的”，他们回答道。好吧，我本可以辞退他，但 J.R. 皮尔斯很聪明，留住了他。克洛斯顿最终完成了克洛斯顿电缆。此后，他源源不断地产生了许多好主意。一次成功给他带来了信心和勇气。

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. Courage is one of the things that Shannon had supremely. You have only to think of his major theorem. He wants to create a method of coding, but he doesn’t know what to do so he makes a random code. Then he is stuck. And then he asks the impossible question, ``What would the average random code do?‘’ He then proves that the average code is arbitrarily good, and that therefore there must be at least one good code. Who but a man of infinite courage could have dared to think those thoughts? That is the characteristic of great scientists; they have courage. They will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think and continue to think.

成功的科学家的一个特点是具有勇气。一旦你鼓起勇气，相信自己能够解决重要的问题，那么你就能做到。如果你认为自己做不到，那么你几乎肯定做不到。香农就具有极高的勇气。你只需要想想他的主要定理。他想创造一种编码方法，但他不知道该怎么做，于是他编了一个随机码。然后他陷入了困境。接着，他提出了一个看似不可能的问题：“平均随机码会怎样？” 然后他证明了平均码是任意好的，并且因此至少存在一个好码。除了一个具有无限勇气的人之外，谁还敢去想这些问题呢？这就是伟大科学家的特点；他们具有勇气。他们会在难以置信的情况下勇往直前；他们会思考，并且持续不断地思考。

Age is another factor which the physicists particularly worry about. They always are saying that you have got to do it when you are young or you will never do it. Einstein did things very early, and all the quantum mechanic fellows were disgustingly young when they did their best work. Most mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and astrophysicists do what we consider their best work when they are young. It is not that they don’t do good work in their old age but what we value most is often what they did early. On the other hand, in music, politics and literature, often what we consider their best work was done late. I don’t know how whatever field you are in fits this scale, but age has some effect.

年龄是另一个因素，物理学家们尤其担心这一点。他们总是说，你必须在年轻的时候就做出成果，否则你永远也做不到了。爱因斯坦很早就做出了成果，所有那些从事量子力学研究的人在做出最佳成果时都非常年轻。大多数数学家、理论物理学家和天体物理学家在年轻时做出了我们所认为的他们最好的成果。这并不是说他们在老年时不做好的工作，但我们最看重的往往是他们早期所做的事情。另一方面，在音乐、政治和文学领域，我们所认为的他们最好的作品往往是在晚期完成的。我不知道你所在的领域在这个尺度上处于什么位置，但年龄确实有一定的影响。

But let me say why age seems to have the effect it does. In the first place if you do some good work you will find yourself on all kinds of committees and unable to do any more work. You may find yourself as I saw Brattain when he got a Nobel Prize. The day the prize was announced we all assembled in Arnold Auditorium; all three winners got up and made speeches. The third one, Brattain, practically with tears in his eyes, said, I know about this Nobel-Prize effect and I am not going to let it affect me; I am going to remain good old Walter Brattain.‘’ Well I said to myself, That is nice.‘’ But in a few weeks I saw it was affecting him. Now he could only work on great problems.

当一个人取得了一些成就时，他往往会发现自己要参加各种各样的委员会，从而无法再继续从事研究工作。我曾见过布拉顿获得诺贝尔奖时的情形。奖项宣布的那天，我们在阿诺德礼堂集合；三位获奖者都站起来发表了演讲。第三个发言的布拉顿，眼中几乎含着泪水，他说：“我知道诺贝尔奖的效应，我不会让它影响我；我仍然是那个老沃尔特・布拉顿。” 我当时心里想：“这很好。” 但几周后，我就发现它已经开始影响他了。现在他只能从事伟大的课题研究。

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. Not that they weren’t good afterwards, but they were superb before they got there and were only good afterwards.

当你成名之后，就很难再去从事小问题的研究了。这就是香农后来遇到的问题。在创立了信息论之后，接下来该做什么呢？伟大的科学家们常常会犯这样的错误。他们没有继续去播撒那些能长成参天大树的小橡子。他们试图一下子就获得巨大的成果。但事情并不是这样的。所以，这就是为什么你会发现，当你早早地获得了认可，似乎就被 “消毒” 了。实际上，我要引用多年来我最喜欢的一句话。在我看来，普林斯顿高等研究院毁掉的好科学家比任何机构培养出来的都要多。这是根据他们来之前和来之后的表现来判断的。并不是说他们之后就不优秀了，而是他们来之前非常卓越，而之后却只是优秀而已。

This brings up the subject, out of order perhaps, of working conditions. What most people think are the best working conditions, are not. Very clearly they are not because people are often most productive when working conditions are bad. One of the better times of the Cambridge Physical Laboratories was when they had practically shacks - they did some of the best physics ever.

这也许有点顺序颠倒，但接下来我要谈谈工作条件。大多数人认为的最好的工作条件，其实并不是。这非常明显，因为人们往往在工作条件不好的时候最有成效。剑桥物理实验室的鼎盛时期之一就是当他们的实验室几乎只是简陋的小屋时 —— 他们做出了有史以来最好的一些物理学成果。

I give you a story from my own private life. Early on it became evident to me that Bell Laboratories was not going to give me the conventional acre of programming people to program computing machines in absolute binary. It was clear they weren’t going to. But that was the way everybody did it. I could go to the West Coast and get a job with the airplane companies without any trouble, but the exciting people were at Bell Labs and the fellows out there in the airplane companies were not. I thought for a long while about, Did I want to go or not?‘’ and I wondered how I could get the best of two possible worlds. I finally said to myself, Hamming, you think the machines can do practically everything. Why can’t you make them write programs?‘’ What appeared at first to me as a defect forced me into automatic programming very early. What appears to be a fault, often, by a change of viewpoint, turns out to be one of the greatest assets you can have. But you are not likely to think that when you first look at the thing and say, ``Gee, I’m never going to get enough programmers, so how can I ever do any great programming?‘’

让我来给你讲一个我自己的故事。很早就很明显，贝尔实验室不会像往常一样给我配备一帮编程人员来用绝对二进制给计算机编程。他们显然不会那么做。但那时大家都是这么做的。我可以毫不费力地去西海岸，在那些飞机制造公司找到一份工作，但那些令人振奋的人才都在贝尔实验室，而飞机制造公司的那些家伙并不是。我思考了很长时间，“我是不是该去呢？” 我想知道我该如何兼得这两个世界的长处。最后我对自己说：“汉明，你认为机器几乎能做任何事情。为什么你不能让它们自己编写程序呢？” 一开始在我看来是一个缺陷的东西，却使我早早地进入了自动编程领域。通常，一个看似有缺陷的东西，只要换一个角度去看待，往往就会成为你能拥有的最强大的资产之一。但当你一开始看到这个问题就说：“哎呀，我永远都不会有足够的程序员，那我怎么可能做出伟大的程序呢？” 的时候，你不太可能这么想。

And there are many other stories of the same kind; Grace Hopper has similar ones. I think that if you look carefully you will see that 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. So ideal working conditions are very strange. The ones you want aren’t always the best ones for you.

还有许多类似的故事；格蕾丝・霍珀也有类似的经历。我认为，如果你仔细观察，你会发现伟大的科学家们常常通过转变问题的角度，把一个缺陷变成一种优势。例如，许多科学家在发现他们无法解决一个问题时，最终开始研究为什么不能解决。然后他们从另一个角度去看待问题，说：“当然，就是这样”，从而得到了一个重要的结果。所以，理想的工作条件是非常奇怪的。你想要的并不总是最适合你的。

Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode’s office and said, How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?‘’ He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.‘’ I simply slunk out of the office!

现在，我们来谈谈动力问题。你会发现大多数伟大的科学家都具有巨大的动力。我在贝尔实验室和约翰・图基共事了十年。他有着巨大的动力。在我加入后的三四年左右的一天，我发现约翰・图基比我稍微年轻一点。约翰是个天才，而我显然不是。我气冲冲地走进博德的办公室，说：“像我这个年纪的人怎么可能像约翰・图基知道得那么多呢？” 他向后靠在椅子上，双手放在脑后，微微一笑，说：“汉明，如果你像他那样努力工作那么多年，你会惊讶地发现自己会知道多少东西。” 我只能灰溜溜地走出办公室！

What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.‘’ Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don’t want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode’s remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don’t like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There’s no question about this.

博德所说的其实是这样的：“知识和生产力就像复利一样。” 假设有两个能力大致相同的人，其中一个比另一个多付出百分之十的努力，那么后者在产出上将远远超过前者的两倍。你知道得越多，你就能学到越多；你学到的越多，你就能做得越多；你能做的越多，机会就越多 —— 这非常像复利。我不想给出一个具体的比率，但它是一个很高的比率。假设有两个能力完全相同的人，那个每天都能多思考一个小时的人，在一生中的产出将远远超过另一个人。我将博德的话铭记在心；在接下来的几年里，我花了更多的时间努力工作，实际上，我确实能完成更多的工作。我不太好意思在我妻子面前提这件事，但有时我确实有点忽略了她；我需要去学习。如果你想完成你想要做的事情，你就必须忽略一些事情。这一点毫无疑问。

On this matter of drive Edison says, ``Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.‘’ He may have been exaggerating, but the idea is that solid work, steadily applied, gets you surprisingly far. The steady application of effort with a little bit more work, intelligently applied is what does it. That’s the trouble; drive, misapplied, doesn’t get you anywhere. I’ve often wondered why so many of my good friends at Bell Labs who worked as hard or harder than I did, didn’t have so much to show for it. The misapplication of effort is a very serious matter. Just hard work is not enough - it must be applied sensibly.

关于动力，爱迪生说：“天才就是 99% 的汗水加上 1% 的灵感。” 他可能有点夸张，但这个观点是说，持续不断地努力工作，会让你走得出奇地远。持续不断地努力工作，再加上一点额外的、明智的工作，这才是关键。问题在于，如果动力用错了地方，你就不会有任何收获。我常常在想，为什么我在贝尔实验室的许多好朋友，他们工作得和我一样努力，甚至比我还努力，却没有我那么多的成果。努力用错了地方是一个非常严重的问题。仅仅努力工作是不够的 —— 它必须明智地运用。

There’s another trait on the side which I want to talk about; that trait is ambiguity. It took me a while to discover its importance. Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you’ll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won’t get started. It requires a lovely balance. But most great scientists are well aware of why their theories are true and they are also well aware of some slight misfits which don’t quite fit and they don’t forget it. Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down every piece of evidence which appeared to contradict his beliefs because otherwise they would disappear from his mind. When you find apparent flaws you’ve got to be sensitive and keep track of those things, and keep an eye out for how they can be explained or how the theory can be changed to fit them. Those are often the great contributions. Great contributions are rarely done by adding another decimal place. It comes down to an emotional commitment. Most great scientists are completely committed to their problem. Those who don’t become committed seldom produce outstanding, first-class work.

还有一个我想谈的特质，那就是模糊性。我花了好长时间才发现它的价值。大多数人都喜欢相信某件事是真的或不是真的。伟大的科学家却能很好地容忍模糊性。他们足够相信这个理论，从而继续前进；他们又足够怀疑这个理论，从而注意到其中的错误和缺陷，这样他们就可以向前迈进，创造出新的替代理论。如果你过于相信，你就永远不会发现其中的缺陷；如果你过于怀疑，你就无法开始。这需要一种美妙的平衡。但大多数伟大的科学家都非常清楚他们的理论为什么是正确的，他们也清楚地知道一些不完全符合的地方，而且他们不会忘记这些。达尔文在他的自传中写道，他觉得有必要写下所有似乎与他的信念相矛盾的证据，否则这些证据就会从他的脑海中消失。当你发现明显的缺陷时，你必须敏感地跟踪这些情况，并留意如何解释它们或如何改变理论以适应它们。这些往往是伟大的贡献。伟大的贡献很少是通过增加一个小数位来完成的。归根结底，这是一个情感上的承诺。大多数伟大的科学家都完全致力于他们的问题。那些不投入的人很少能做出杰出的一流成果。

Now again, emotional commitment is not enough. It is a necessary condition apparently. And I think I can tell you the reason why. Everybody who has studied creativity is driven finally to saying, ``creativity comes out of your subconscious.‘’ Somehow, suddenly, there it is. It just appears. Well, we know very little about the subconscious; but one thing you are pretty well aware of is that your dreams also come out of your subconscious. And you’re aware your dreams are, to a fair extent, a reworking of the experiences of the day. If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one morning, or on some afternoon, and there’s the answer. For those who don’t get committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things and doesn’t produce the big result. So the way to manage yourself is that when you have a real important problem you don’t let anything else get the center of your attention - you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep your subconscious starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully and get the answer in the morning, free.

再次强调，情感上的投入是不够的。这似乎是一个必要条件。我想我可以告诉你其中的原因。每一个研究过创造力的人都最终会得出这样的结论：“创造力来自你的潜意识。” 不知何故，突然之间，它就出现了。我们对潜意识的了解非常少，但有一点你相当清楚，那就是你的梦也是来自你的潜意识。而且你也知道，你的梦在很大程度上是对当天经历的一种重新加工。如果你全身心地投入到一个话题中，日复一日，你的潜意识除了思考你的问题之外无事可做。因此，你会在某一天早晨醒来，或者在某个下午，突然找到了答案。对于那些没有全身心投入到当前问题的人来说，他们的潜意识会在其他事情上浪费时间，而不会产生重大的成果。所以，管理自己的方法就是，当你有一个真正重要的问题时，你不要让其他任何事情成为你关注的焦点 —— 你要把你的思想集中在问题上。让你的潜意识处于饥饿状态，这样它就不得不去思考你的问题，这样你就可以安心睡觉，然后在早上免费得到答案。

Now Alan Chynoweth mentioned that I used to eat at the physics table. I had been eating with the mathematicians and I found out that I already knew a fair amount of mathematics; in fact, I wasn’t learning much. The physics table was, as he said, an exciting place, but I think he exaggerated on how much I contributed. It was very interesting to listen to Shockley, Brattain, Bardeen, J. B. Johnson, Ken McKay and other people, and I was learning a lot. But unfortunately a Nobel Prize came, and a promotion came, and what was left was the dregs. Nobody wanted what was left. Well, there was no use eating with them!

现在，艾伦・奇诺思提到我过去常常在物理学家的餐桌旁吃饭。我以前一直和数学家们一起吃饭，我发现我已经知道相当多的数学知识了；实际上，我没有学到多少新东西。正如他所说，物理学家的餐桌是一个令人兴奋的地方，但我认为他夸大了我所做出的贡献。聆听肖克莱、布拉顿、巴丁、J.B. 约翰逊、肯・麦凯和其他人讲话是非常有趣的，我学到了很多东西。但不幸的是，一个诺贝尔奖来了，一个晋升也来了，剩下的就是残羹冷炙。没有人想要剩下的东西。好吧，和他们一起吃饭已经没有意义了！

Over on the other side of the dining hall was a chemistry table. I had worked with one of the fellows, Dave McCall; furthermore he was courting our secretary at the time. I went over and said, Do you mind if I join you?‘’ They can’t say no, so I started eating with them for a while. And I started asking, What are the important problems of your field?‘’ And after a week or so, What important problems are you working on?‘’ And after some more time I came in one day and said, If what you are doing is not important, and if you don’t think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?‘’ I wasn’t welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with! That was in the spring.

在餐厅的另一边有一个化学家的餐桌。我和其中一位成员，戴夫・麦卡勒合作过；而且当时他正在追求我们的秘书。我走过去说：“我能不能和你们一起吃饭？” 他们不能说不，于是我就开始和他们一起吃了一段时间。我开始问：“你们领域中哪些是重要的问题？” 大约一周后，我问：“你们正在研究哪些重要的问题？” 又过了一段时间，有一天我走进来，说：“如果你们所做的事情并不重要，而且你们也不认为它会带来一些重要的成果，那你们为什么要在贝尔实验室做这个呢？” 从那以后，我不再受欢迎了；我不得不找别的人一起吃饭！那是春天的事。

In the fall, Dave McCall stopped me in the hall and said, Hamming, that remark of yours got underneath my skin. I thought about it all summer, i.e. what were the important problems in my field. I haven’t changed my research,‘’ he says, but I think it was well worthwhile.‘’ And I said, Thank you Dave,‘’ and went on. I noticed a couple of months later he was made the head of the department. I noticed the other day he was a Member of the National Academy of Engineering. I noticed he has succeeded. I have never heard the names of any of the other fellows at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles. They were unable to ask themselves, What are the important problems in my field?‘’

到了秋天，戴夫・麦卡勒在走廊里拦住我说：“汉明，你那句话真的刺痛了我。我整个夏天都在思考，即我们领域中哪些是重要的问题。他说，‘我没有改变我的研究，但我认为这是非常值得的。’我说，‘谢谢你，戴夫，’然后就走了。几个月后，我注意到他成为了那个部门的负责人。我前些天还注意到他是国家工程院院士。我注意到他成功了。我从来没有听说过那张桌子上的其他人的名字在科学和科学界被提及。他们无法问自己，‘我们领域中哪些是重要的问题？’”

If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work. It’s perfectly obvious. Great scientists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them. Let me warn you, `important problem’ must be phrased carefully. The three outstanding problems in physics, in a certain sense, were never worked on while I was at Bell Labs. By important I mean guaranteed a Nobel Prize and any sum of money you want to mention. We didn’t work on (1) time travel, (2) teleportation, and (3) antigravity. They are not important problems because we do not have an attack. It’s not the consequence that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack. That is what makes a problem important. When I say that most scientists don’t work on important problems, I mean it in that sense. The average scientist, so far as I can make out, spends almost all his time working on problems which he believes will not be important and he also doesn’t believe that they will lead to important problems.

如果你不从事重要的问题，你就不太可能做出重要的工作。这是非常明显的。伟大的科学家们以一种谨慎的方式思考过他们领域中的许多重要问题，并且他们始终关注着如何攻克这些问题。让我提醒你一下，“重要问题” 必须谨慎地表述。从某种意义上说，我在贝尔实验室的时候，物理学中的三个杰出的问题我们从未研究过。我说的重要是指保证能获得诺贝尔奖和你所能提到的任何一笔钱。我们没有研究（1）时间旅行，（2）瞬间移动，和（3）反引力。它们不是重要的问题，因为我们没有攻克的方法。使一个问题重要的不是它的结果，而是你有合理的攻克方法。这才是使一个问题重要的原因。当我说大多数科学家不从事重要问题时，我的意思就是这个。据我所知，平均的科学家几乎把所有的时间都花在研究那些他认为不会重要的问题上，而且他也不相信这些问题会带来重要的问题。

I spoke earlier about planting acorns so that oaks will grow. You can’t always know exactly where to be, but you can keep active in places where something might happen. And even if you believe that great science is a matter of luck, you can stand on a mountain top where lightning strikes; you don’t have to hide in the valley where you’re safe. But the average scientist does routine safe work almost all the time and so he (or she) doesn’t produce much. It’s that simple. If you want to do great work, you clearly must work on important problems, and you should have an idea.

我之前说过，要播撒橡子，让橡树能够生长。你不可能总是确切地知道该在哪里，但你可以保持活跃在可能发生事情的地方。即使你认为伟大的科学发现只是运气使然，你也可以站在山顶上，让闪电击中你；你不必躲在山谷里那个安全的地方。但是，平均的科学家几乎总是做常规的安全工作，因此他（或她）没有取得多少成果。就这么简单。如果你想做出伟大的工作，你显然必须从事重要的问题，而且你应该有自己的想法。

Along those lines at some urging from John Tukey and others, I finally adopted what I called Great Thoughts Time.‘’ When I went to lunch Friday noon, I would only discuss great thoughts after that. By great thoughts I mean ones like: What will be the role of computers in all of AT&T?‘’, How will computers change science?‘’ For example, I came up with the observation at that time that nine out of ten experiments were done in the lab and one in ten on the computer. I made a remark to the vice presidents one time, that it would be reversed, i.e. nine out of ten experiments would be done on the computer and one in ten in the lab. They knew I was a crazy mathematician and had no sense of reality. I knew they were wrong and they’ve been proved wrong while I have been proved right. They built laboratories when they didn’t need them. I saw that computers were transforming science because I spent a lot of time asking What will be the impact of computers on science and how can I change it?‘’ I asked myself, ``How is it going to change Bell Labs?‘’ I remarked one time, in the same address, that more than one-half of the people at Bell Labs will be interacting closely with computing machines before I leave. Well, you all have terminals now. I thought hard about where was my field going, where were the opportunities, and what were the important things to do. Let me go there so there is a chance I can do important things.

在这方面，在约翰・图基和其他人的一些敦促下，我最终采纳了我所说的 “伟大的思想时间”。当我周五中午去吃午饭时，我只在那之后讨论伟大的思想。我说的伟大的思想是指像这样的问题：“计算机在 AT&T 中的作用将是什么？”“计算机将如何改变科学？” 例如，我当时观察到，十个实验中有九个是在实验室里做的，有一个是在计算机上做的。我有一次对副总裁们说，这种情况将会颠倒过来，即十个实验中有九个将在计算机上进行，有一个在实验室里进行。他们知道我是一个不切实际的疯狂数学家。我知道他们是错的，而我被证明是对的，他们被证明是错了。他们建造了本不需要的实验室。我看到计算机正在改变科学，因为我花了大量的时间去思考 “计算机对科学的影响是什么，我该如何去改变它？” 我问自己，“它将如何改变贝尔实验室呢？” 我在同一个演讲中提到过一次，贝尔实验室超过一半的人在我离开之前将与计算机密切互动。现在，你们都有终端了。我仔细思考了我的领域将走向何方，哪里有机会，以及哪些是重要的事情要做。让我去那里，这样我才有机会做一些重要的事情。

Most great scientists know many important problems. They have something between 10 and 20 important problems for which they are looking for an attack. And when they see a new idea come up, one hears them say Well that bears on this problem.‘’ They drop all the other things and get after it. Now I can tell you a horror story that was told to me but I can’t vouch for the truth of it. I was sitting in an airport talking to a friend of mine from Los Alamos about how it was lucky that the fission experiment occurred over in Europe when it did because that got us working on the atomic bomb here in the US. He said No; at Berkeley we had gathered a bunch of data; we didn’t get around to reducing it because we were building some more equipment, but if we had reduced that data we would have found fission.‘’ They had it in their hands and they didn’t pursue it. They came in second!

大多数伟大的科学家都知道许多重要的问题。他们有大约 10 到 20 个重要的问题，正在寻找解决方法。当他们看到一个新的想法出现时，你会听到他们说：“嗯，这与这个问题有关。” 他们会放下所有其他的事情，去追求它。现在，我可以告诉你一个恐怖的故事，有人告诉过我，但我不能保证它是真的。我坐在机场，和我在洛斯阿拉莫斯的一个朋友谈论，幸好裂变实验在欧洲发生的时间正是那个时候，因为这使我们开始在美国研制原子弹。他说：“不，在伯克利，我们收集了一大批数据；我们没有去整理这些数据，因为我们正在制造更多的设备，但如果我们整理了这些数据，我们就会发现裂变。” 他们本可以做到这一点，但他们没有去追求它。他们只能屈居第二！

The great scientists, when an opportunity opens up, get after it and they pursue it. They drop all other things. They get rid of other things and they get after an idea because they had already thought the thing through. Their minds are prepared; they see the opportunity and they go after it. Now of course lots of times it doesn’t work out, but you don’t have to hit many of them to do some great science. It’s kind of easy. One of the chief tricks is to live a long time!

伟大的科学家们，当一个机会出现时，他们会抓住它并去追求它。他们放下所有其他的事情。他们摆脱其他事情，去追求一个想法，因为他们已经考虑过这个问题。他们的头脑已经做好了准备；他们看到了机会，他们就去追求它。当然，很多时候事情并不成功，但你不需要抓住很多机会就能做出伟大的科学成果。这有点容易。其中一个主要的诀窍就是活得长一些！

Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. 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. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.‘’ I don’t know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.

另一个特点，我花了一段时间才注意到。我注意到那些开着门工作或关着门工作的人有以下事实。我注意到，如果你把办公室的门关上，你今天和明天会完成更多的工作，你比大多数人更有成效。但是，10 年后，不知怎的，你就不知道哪些问题值得研究了；你所做的所有艰苦工作在重要性上有点离题。而那些开着门工作的人会受到各种各样的干扰，但他偶尔也会得到一些关于世界和什么可能是重要的事情的线索。现在我无法证明因果关系，因为你说，“关着的门象征着封闭的头脑。” 我不知道。但我说，那些开着门工作的人和那些最终做重要事情的人之间有相当好的相关性，尽管那些关着门工作的人往往工作更努力。不知何故，他们似乎在做有点错误的事情 —— 不多，但足以错过名声。

I want to talk on another topic. It is based on the song which I think many of you know, It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.‘’ I’ll start with an example of my own. I was conned into doing on a digital computer, in the absolute binary days, a problem which the best analog computers couldn’t do. And I was getting an answer. When I thought carefully and said to myself, You know, Hamming, you’re going to have to file a report on this military job; after you spend a lot of money you’re going to have to account for it and every analog installation is going to want the report to see if they can’t find flaws in it.‘’ I was doing the required integration by a rather crummy method, to say the least, but I was getting the answer. And I realized that in truth the problem was not just to get the answer; it was to demonstrate for the first time, and beyond question, that I could beat the analog computer on its own ground with a digital machine. I reworked the method of solution, created a theory which was nice and elegant, and changed the way we computed the answer; the results were no different. The published report had an elegant method which was later known for years as ``Hamming’s Method of Integrating Differential Equations.‘’ It is somewhat obsolete now, but for a while it was a very good method. By changing the problem slightly, I did important work rather than trivial work.

我想再谈谈另一个话题。它是基于一首我想你们很多人都知道的歌曲，“重要的不是你做什么，而是你如何去做。” 我先从我自己的一个例子说起。我在绝对二进制时代被哄骗到用数字计算机去解决一个最好的模拟计算机都无法解决的问题。而我得到了一个答案。当我仔细思考并对自己说：“你知道吗，汉明，你将不得不就这项军事工作提交一份报告；在你花了大量的钱之后，你将不得不对此做出解释，而且每一个模拟装置都会想要这份报告，看看他们能否从中找出一些漏洞。” 我用一种相当糟糕的方法（至少可以说是这样）来做所需的积分运算，但我得到了答案。我意识到，事实上，问题不仅仅是要得到答案；而是要无可置疑地第一次证明，我可以在模拟计算机的领域内用自己的数字机器打败它。我重新研究了解决问题的方法，创立了一个优美而优雅的理论，并改变了我们计算答案的方式；结果并没有不同。发表的报告中有一种优雅的方法，多年来一直被称为 “汉明的微分方程积分法。” 这种方法现在有点过时了，但在一段时间内它是一个非常好的方法。通过稍微改变一下问题，我做了重要的工作，而不是琐碎的工作。

In the same way, when using the machine up in the attic in the early days, I was solving one problem after another after another; a fair number were successful and there were a few failures. I went home one Friday after finishing a problem, and curiously enough I wasn’t happy; I was depressed. I could see life being a long sequence of one problem after another after another. After quite a while of thinking I decided, No, I should be in the mass production of a variable product. I should be concerned with all of next year’s problems, not just the one in front of my face.‘’ By changing the question I still got the same kind of results or better, but I changed things and did important work. I attacked the major problem - How do I conquer machines and do all of next year’s problems when I don’t know what they are going to be? How do I prepare for it? How do I do this one so I’ll be on top of it? How do I obey Newton’s rule? He said, If I have seen further than others, it is because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.‘’ These days we stand on each other’s feet!

同样，在早期使用阁楼上的机器时，我一个接一个地解决问题；相当多的问题都成功解决了，也有一些失败。一个周五，我在完成一个问题后回家，奇怪的是，我不高兴；我很沮丧。我看到生活是一个接一个的问题的漫长序列。经过一段时间的思考，我决定，“不，我应该从事可变产品的批量生产。我应该关心明年的所有问题，而不仅仅是眼前的一个。” 通过改变问题，我仍然得到了相同类型的结果，或者更好，但我改变了事情，做了重要的工作。我着手解决主要问题 —— 我如何征服机器并解决明年的所有问题，而我不知道它们将是什么？我如何为它做准备？我如何做到这一点，我将处于领先地位？我如何遵循牛顿的规则？他说，“如果我比别人看得更远，那是因为我站在巨人的肩膀上。” 如今，我们是站在彼此的脚上！

You should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it, so they will indeed say, ``Yes, I’ve stood on so and so’s shoulders and I saw further.‘’ The essence of science is cumulative. By changing a problem slightly you can often do great work rather than merely good work. Instead of attacking isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an isolated problem except as characteristic of a class.

你应该以这样的方式完成你的工作，让别人可以在你的工作基础上继续工作，这样他们确实会说，“是的，我站在了某某人的肩膀上，我看得更远了。” 科学的本质是累积的。通过稍微改变一个问题，你常常可以做出伟大的工作，而不仅仅是好的工作。我不再解决孤立的问题，除非它是作为一个类别问题的代表。

Now if you are much of a mathematician you know that the effort to generalize often means that the solution is simple. Often by stopping and saying, ``This is the problem he wants but this is characteristic of so and so. Yes, I can attack the whole class with a far superior method than the particular one because I was earlier embedded in needless detail.‘’ The business of abstraction frequently makes things simple. Furthermore, I filed away the methods and prepared for the future problems.

现在，如果你是一个数学家，你知道努力去概括常常意味着解决方案是简单的。通常，停下来，说：“这是他想要解决的问题，但这是某某问题的特征。是的，我可以使用一种比特定方法优越得多的方法来解决整个类别，因为我之前陷入了不必要的细节之中。” 抽象的业务常常使事情变得简单。此外，我将这些方法存档起来，为未来的问题做好准备。

To end this part, I’ll remind you, ``It is a poor workman who blames his tools - the good man gets on with the job, given what he’s got, and gets the best answer he can.‘’ And I suggest that by altering the problem, by looking at the thing differently, you can make a great deal of difference in your final productivity because you can either do it in such a fashion that people can indeed build on what you’ve done, or you can do it in such a fashion that the next person has to essentially duplicate again what you’ve done. It isn’t just a matter of the job, it’s the way you write the report, the way you write the paper, the whole attitude. It’s just as easy to do a broad, general job as one very special case. And it’s much more satisfying and rewarding!

为了结束这一部分，我要提醒你，“一个抱怨工具的工人是个糟糕的工人 —— 一个好工人会利用他所拥有的东西，继续工作，并得到他能得到的最好的答案。” 我建议，通过改变问题，通过用不同的方式看待事物，你可以在最终的生产力上产生很大的不同，因为你可以以这样的方式去做，人们确实可以在你的成果基础上继续工作，或者你可以以这样的方式去做，下一个人将不得不基本上重复你所做的事情。这不仅仅是一个工作的问题，这是你写报告、写论文的方式，是整个态度。做一件广泛、一般性的工作和做一件非常特殊的工作一样容易。而且，这要令人满意和值得得多！

I have now come down to a topic which is very distasteful; it is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. ‘Selling’ to a scientist is an awkward thing to do. It’s very ugly; you shouldn’t have to do it. The world is supposed to be waiting, and when you do something great, they should rush out and welcome it. But the fact is everyone is busy with their own work. You must present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what you’ve done, read it, and come back and say, "Yes, that was good.‘’ I suggest that when you open a journal, as you turn the pages, you ask why you read some articles and not others. You had better write your report so when it is published in the Physical Review, or wherever else you want it, as the readers are turning the pages they won’t just turn your pages but they will stop and read yours. If they don’t stop and read it, you won’t get credit.

我现在要谈到一个令人非常不愉快的话题；仅仅完成一项工作是不够的，你还必须推销它。对于一个科学家来说，“推销” 是一件很尴尬的事情。这是非常难看的；你本不应该去做它。人们应该在等待着，当你做出了一项伟大的成果时，他们应该蜂拥而上，欢迎它。但事实是，每个人都在忙于自己的工作。你必须很好地展示它，让他们放下手头的工作，看看你所做的事情，阅读它，然后回来对你说：“是的，这很好。” 我建议，当你打开一本杂志，翻阅页面时，你要问一问为什么你会阅读一些文章而不是其他文章。你最好把你的报告写得这样好，当它在《物理评论》上发表，或者在其他你想发表的地方发表时，读者在翻阅页面时不会只是翻过你的那几页，而是会停下来阅读你的文章。如果他们不停下来阅读它，你就不会得到认可。

There are three things you have to do in selling. You have to learn to write clearly and well so that people will read it, you must learn to give reasonably formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks. We had a lot of so-called ‘back room scientists.’ In a conference, they would keep quiet. Three weeks later after a decision was made they filed a report saying why you should do so and so. Well, it was too late. They would not stand up right in the middle of a hot conference, in the middle of activity, and say, "We should do this for these reasons.‘’ You need to master that form of communication as well as prepared speeches.

在推销时，你必须做到三点。你必须学会清晰而良好地写作，让人们愿意去读；你必须学会做比较正式的演讲；你还必须学会做非正式的演讲。我们有许多所谓的 “后房科学家”。在一个会议上，他们保持沉默。在决定做出三周后，他们提交了一份报告，说明为什么应该做这样和那样的事情。好吧，太迟了。他们不会在激烈的会议中间，在活动进行中站起来说：“我们应该基于这些原因做这件事。” 你需要掌握这种沟通方式，就像准备好的演讲一样。

When I first started, I got practically physically ill while giving a speech, and I was very, very nervous. I realized I either had to learn to give speeches smoothly or I would essentially partially cripple my whole career. The first time IBM asked me to give a speech in New York one evening, I decided I was going to give a really good speech, a speech that was wanted, not a technical one but a broad one, and at the end if they liked it, I’d quietly say, "Any time you want one I’ll come in and give you one.‘’ As a result, I got a great deal of practice giving speeches to a limited audience and I got over being afraid. Furthermore, I could also then study what methods were effective and what were ineffective.

当我刚开始的时候，我在做演讲时几乎都快要生病了，而且我非常非常紧张。我意识到，我必须学会流畅地做演讲，否则我将基本上部分地毁掉我的整个职业生涯。当 IBM 第一次邀请我在纽约的一个晚上做演讲时，我决定我要做一个非常好的演讲，一个受欢迎的演讲，不是一个技术性的演讲，而是一个广泛的演讲，如果他们喜欢，我在结束时会悄悄地说：“任何时候你们想要，我都会来给你们做一个。” 结果，我得到了大量的实践，为有限的听众做演讲，我不再害怕了。此外，我还可以研究哪些方法是有效的，哪些是无效的。

While going to meetings I had already been studying why some papers are remembered and most are not. The technical person wants to give a highly limited technical talk. Most of the time the audience wants a broad general talk and wants much more survey and background than the speaker is willing to give. As a result, many talks are ineffective. The speaker names a topic and suddenly plunges into the details he’s solved. Few people in the audience may follow. You should paint a general picture to say why it’s important, and then slowly give a sketch of what was done. Then a larger number of people will say, Yes, Joe has done that,‘’ or Mary has done that; I really see where it is; yes, Mary really gave a good talk; I understand what Mary has done.‘’ The tendency is to give a highly restricted, safe talk; this is usually ineffective. Furthermore, many talks are filled with far too much information. So I say this idea of selling is obvious.

在参加会议时，我已经在研究为什么有些论文被人们记住，而大多数却没有。技术人员想做一个高度有限的技术性演讲。大多数时候，听众想要一个广泛的、一般的演讲，并且想要比演讲者愿意提供的更多的调查和背景。因此，许多演讲是无效的。演讲者提出一个主题，然后突然深入到他所解决的细节中。听众中可能只有少数人能跟上。你应该画出一个一般的画面，说清楚为什么它很重要，然后慢慢地勾勒出所做的事情。然后会有更多的人说：“是的，乔做了那件事，” 或者 “玛丽做了那件事；我真的明白它在哪里；是的，玛丽确实做了一场很好的演讲；我理解玛丽所做的。” 倾向于做一个高度限制的、安全的演讲；这通常是没有效果的。此外，许多演讲包含了过多的信息。所以我说，这个推销的想法是显而易见的。

Let me summarize. You’ve got to work on important problems. I deny that it is all luck, but I admit there is a fair element of luck. I subscribe to Pasteur’s Luck favors the prepared mind.‘’ I favor heavily what I did. Friday afternoons for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not important. I found in the early days I had believed this’ and yet had spent all week marching in that’ direction. It was kind of foolish. If I really believe the action is over there, why do I march in this direction? I either had to change my goal or change what I did. So I changed something I did and I marched in the direction I thought was important. It’s that easy.

让我来总结一下。你必须从事重要的问题。我不承认这全是运气，但我承认运气有一定的成分。我赞同巴斯德的 “运气青睐有准备的头脑。” 我非常赞同我所做的事情。多年来，每周五下午 —— 只思考伟大的问题 —— 这意味着我投入了 10% 的时间去努力理解这个领域中更大的问题，即什么是重要的，什么不是。在早期，我发现我曾相信 “这个”，然而却花了一整周的时间朝着 “那个” 方向前进。这有点愚蠢。如果我真的相信行动是在那边，为什么我要朝着这个方向前进呢？我必须要么改变我的目标，要么改变我所做的事情。所以我改变了一些我做的事情，我朝着我认为重要的方向前进。就这么简单。

Now you might tell me you haven’t got control over what you have to work on. Well, when you first begin, you may not. But once you’re moderately successful, there are more people asking for results than you can deliver and you have some power of choice, but not completely. I’ll tell you a story about that, and it bears on the subject of educating your boss. I had a boss named Schelkunoff; he was, and still is, a very good friend of mine. Some military person came to me and demanded some answers by Friday. Well, I had already dedicated my computing resources to reducing data on the fly for a group of scientists; I was knee deep in short, small, important problems. This military person wanted me to solve his problem by the end of the day on Friday. I said, No, I’ll give it to you Monday. I can work on it over the weekend. I’m not going to do it now.‘’ He goes down to my boss, Schelkunoff, and Schelkunoff says, You must run this for him; he’s got to have it by Friday.‘’ I tell him, Why do I?‘’; he says, You have to.‘’ I said, Fine, Sergei, but you’re sitting in your office Friday afternoon catching the late bus home to watch as this fellow walks out that door.‘’ I gave the military person the answers late Friday afternoon. I then went to Schelkunoff’s office and sat down; as the man goes out I say, You see Schelkunoff, this fellow has nothing under his arm; but I gave him the answers.‘’ On Monday morning Schelkunoff called him up and said, Did you come in to work over the weekend?‘’ I could hear, as it were, a pause as the fellow ran through his mind of what was going to happen; but he knew he would have had to sign in, and he’d better not say he had when he hadn’t, so he said he hadn’t. Ever after that Schelkunoff said, You set your deadlines; you can change them.‘’

现在，你可能会告诉我，你对你所要从事的工作没有控制权。好吧，当你刚开始的时候，你可能没有。但一旦你取得了一定的成功，就会有更多的人要求你提供成果，比你能提供的还要多，这时你就有了一定的选择权，尽管不是完全的。我给你讲一个关于这个的故事，这和教育你的上司这个话题有关。我曾经有一个上司叫舍尔库诺夫；他现在仍然是我的一个好朋友。有一天，一个军方人员来找我，要求我在周五之前给出一些答案。当时，我已经把我的计算资源全部投入到为一组科学家即时处理数据的工作中了；我正忙于解决一些简短的、小的、重要的问题。这个军方人员想让我在周五结束之前解决他的问题。我说：“不行，我周一给你。我可以利用周末的时间来做这件事。我现在不能做。” 他去找我的上司舍尔库诺夫，舍尔库诺夫说：“你必须为他做这件事；他周五就需要。” 我问他：“为什么？” 他说：“你必须做。” 我说：“好吧，谢尔盖，但你在周五下午坐在办公室里，看着这个家伙从门口走出去，等着最后一班公交车回家。” 我在周五下午晚些时候给了那个军方人员答案。然后我走进舍尔库诺夫的办公室，坐了下来；当那个人走出去的时候，我说：“你看，舍尔库诺夫，这家伙胳膊底下什么也没有；但我给了他答案。” 周一早上，舍尔库诺夫给他打电话说：“你周末来上班了吗？” 我仿佛能听到，那个家伙在脑海里飞快地想着会发生什么；但他知道他必须签到，他最好别说他来过，当他实际上没有来过的时候，所以他回答说他没有来。从那以后，舍尔库诺夫说：“你自己设定你的最后期限；你可以改变它们。”

One lesson was sufficient to educate my boss as to why I didn’t want to do big jobs that displaced exploratory research and why I was justified in not doing crash jobs which absorb all the research computing facilities. I wanted instead to use the facilities to compute a large number of small problems. Again, in the early days, I was limited in computing capacity and it was clear, in my area, that a mathematician had no use for machines.‘’ But I needed more machine capacity. Every time I had to tell some scientist in some other area, No I can’t; I haven’t the machine capacity,‘’ he complained. I said Go tell your Vice President that Hamming needs more computing capacity.‘’ After a while I could see what was happening up there at the top; many people said to my Vice President, Your man needs more computing capacity.‘’ I got it!

一课就足以教育我的上司，为什么我不愿意做那些取代探索性研究的大工作，为什么我不做那些占用所有研究计算设施的紧急工作是合理的。我想用这些设施来计算大量的小问题。同样，在早期，我的计算能力有限，而且在我的领域里，很明显，“数学家不需要机器。” 但我需要更多的机器容量。每次我不得不告诉其他领域的一些科学家，“不，我不能；我没有机器容量”，他都会抱怨。我说：“去告诉你那个副总裁，汉明需要更多的计算能力。” 过了一段时间，我就能看到上面发生了什么；许多人对我的副总裁说：“你的那个人需要更多的计算能力。” 我得到了！

I also did a second thing. When I loaned what little programming power we had to help in the early days of computing, I said, We are not getting the recognition for our programmers that they deserve. When you publish a paper you will thank that programmer or you aren’t getting any more help from me. That programmer is going to be thanked by name; she’s worked hard.‘’ I waited a couple of years. I then went through a year of BSTJ articles and counted what fraction thanked some programmer. I took it into the boss and said, That’s the central role computing is playing in Bell Labs; if the BSTJ is important, that’s how important computing is.‘’ He had to give in. You can educate your bosses. It’s a hard job. In this talk I’m only viewing from the bottom up; I’m not viewing from the top down. But I am telling you how you can get what you want in spite of top management. You have to sell your ideas there also.

我还做了第二件事。当我把我们仅有的那一点编程能力借出去帮助早期的计算机工作时，我说：“我们没有得到我们的程序员应得的认可。当你发表论文时，你会感谢那个程序员，否则你就别想再从我这里得到任何帮助。那个程序员会得到点名感谢；她工作很努力。” 我等了两年。然后我翻阅了一年的《贝尔系统技术杂志》，计算了其中有多少比例的文章感谢了某个程序员。我把这个拿给上司看，说：“这就是计算在贝尔实验室所起的中心作用；如果《贝尔系统技术杂志》很重要，那么计算就有多重要。” 他不得不屈服。你可以教育你的上司。这是一项艰巨的工作。在这次演讲中，我只从下往上讲；我不是从上往下讲。但我在告诉你，尽管有高层管理，你也可以得到你想要的东西。你也必须在那里推销你的想法。

Well I now come down to the topic, Is the effort to be a great scientist worth it?‘’ To answer this, you must ask people. When you get beyond their modesty, most people will say, Yes, doing really first-class work, and knowing it, is as good as wine, women and song put together,‘’ or if it’s a woman she says, ``It is as good as wine, men and song put together.‘’ And if you look at the bosses, they tend to come back or ask for reports, trying to participate in those moments of discovery. They’re always in the way. So evidently those who have done it, want to do it again. But it is a limited survey. I have never dared to go out and ask those who didn’t do great work how they felt about the matter. It’s a biased sample, but I still think it is worth the struggle. I think it is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class work because the truth is, the value is in the struggle more than it is in the result. The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in itself. The success and fame are sort of dividends, in my opinion.

那么，我现在要谈到这个话题，“成为一个伟大的科学家的努力值得吗？” 要回答这个问题，你必须去问人们。当你超越他们的谦逊时，大多数人会说：“是的，做真正的一流工作，并且知道这一点，就像把葡萄酒、女人和歌曲放在一起一样好，” 或者如果是一个女人，她说，“这就像把葡萄酒、男人和歌曲放在一起一样好。” 如果你看看那些上司，他们总是回来，或者要求报告，试图参与那些发现的时刻。他们总是碍手碍脚。所以很明显，那些已经做到的人，想再做一次。但这只是一个有限的调查。我从未敢出去问那些没有做出伟大工作的人他们对这件事的看法。这是一个有偏见的样本，但我仍然认为这是值得奋斗的。我认为，努力去做一流的工作是非常值得的，因为事实是，奋斗的价值比结果本身还要大。努力使自己有所成就似乎是值得的。成功和名声只是某种红利，依我来看。

I’ve told you how to do it. It is so easy, so why do so many people, with all their talents, fail? For example, my opinion, to this day, is that there are in the mathematics department at Bell Labs quite a few people far more able and far better endowed than I, but they didn’t produce as much. Some of them did produce more than I did; Shannon produced more than I did, and some others produced a lot, but I was highly productive against a lot of other fellows who were better equipped. Why is it so? What happened to them? Why do so many of the people who have great promise, fail?

我告诉过你该怎么做。这很容易，那么为什么这么多有才华的人会失败呢？例如，直到今天，我的观点是，在贝尔实验室的数学系里，有不少人比我更有能力，天赋也更好，但他们没有产出那么多。他们中有些人比我产出的还要多；香农比我产出的多，还有一些人产出很多，但和那些比我装备更好的人相比，我却很有生产力。为什么会这样呢？他们发生了什么？为什么这么多有巨大潜力的人失败了呢？

Well, one of the reasons is drive and commitment. The people who do great work with less ability but who are committed to it, get more done that those who have great skill and dabble in it, who work during the day and go home and do other things and come back and work the next day. They don’t have the deep commitment that is apparently necessary for really first-class work. They turn out lots of good work, but we were talking, remember, about first-class work. There is a difference. Good people, very talented people, almost always turn out good work. We’re talking about the outstanding work, the type of work that gets the Nobel Prize and gets recognition.

嗯，其中一个原因是动力和承诺。那些能力较差但致力于做伟大的工作的人，比那些有很高的技能却只是涉猎一下的人，比那些白天工作，晚上回家做其他事情，第二天再回来工作的人，完成得更多。他们没有那种显然对真正一流的工作来说是必要的深厚承诺。他们做出了许多好的成果，但我们记得，我们是在谈论一流的工作。这是有区别的。好人，很有才华的人，几乎总是能做出好的成果。我们是在谈论杰出的工作，那种能获得诺贝尔奖并得到认可的工作。

The second thing is, I think, the problem of personality defects. Now I’ll cite a fellow whom I met out in Irvine. He had been the head of a computing center and he was temporarily on assignment as a special assistant to the president of the university. It was obvious he had a job with a great future. He took me into his office one time and showed me his method of getting letters done and how he took care of his correspondence. He pointed out how inefficient the secretary was. He kept all his letters stacked around there; he knew where everything was. And he would, on his word processor, get the letter out. He was bragging how marvelous it was and how he could get so much more work done without the secretary’s interference. Well, behind his back, I talked to the secretary. The secretary said, Of course I can’t help him; I don’t get his mail. He won’t give me the stuff to log in; I don’t know where he puts it on the floor. Of course I can’t help him.‘’ So I went to him and said, Look, if you adopt the present method and do what you can do single-handedly, you can go just that far and no farther than you can do single-handedly. If you will learn to work with the system, you can go as far as the system will support you.‘’ And, he never went any further. He had his personality defect of wanting total control and was not willing to recognize that you need the support of the system.

第二件事，我认为是个性缺陷的问题。现在我要提到我在欧文遇到的一个家伙。他曾是计算机中心的负责人，他暂时被任命为大学校长的特别助理。很明显，他有一个很有前途的工作。有一次，他把我带到他的办公室，向我展示了他是如何完成信件的，以及他是如何处理他的信件往来。他指出秘书是多么的低效。他把所有的信件都堆在周围；他知道每样东西在哪里。然后他会用他的文字处理器把信件打印出来。他吹嘘这有多棒，以及他如何能在没有秘书干扰的情况下完成更多的工作。好吧，在他背后，我和秘书谈了谈。秘书说：“我当然帮不了他；我收不到他的邮件。他不给我要登记的东西；我不知道他把东西放在地板上的什么地方。当然，我帮不了他。” 所以我对他说：“听着，如果你采用目前的方法，做你能单独做到的事情，你可以走这么远，但不能再远了，你只能做到你单独能做到的程度。如果你愿意学会和这个系统一起工作，你可以走得和这个系统支持你的一样远。” 然而，他再也没有走得更远。他有个性缺陷，他想要完全控制，而且不愿意承认你需要系统的支持。

You find this happening again and again; good scientists will fight the system rather than learn to work with the system and take advantage of all the system has to offer. It has a lot, if you learn how to use it. It takes patience, but you can learn how to use the system pretty well, and you can learn how to get around it. After all, if you want a decision No’, you just go to your boss and get a No’ easy. If you want to do something, don’t ask, do it. Present him with an accomplished fact. Don’t give him a chance to tell you No’. But if you want a No’, it’s easy to get a `No’.

你一次又一次地发现这种情况；好的科学家会与系统作斗争，而不是学会与系统合作，利用系统所能提供的一切。如果你学会了如何使用它，它有很多东西。这需要耐心，但你可以相当好地学会使用这个系统，你可以学会如何绕过它。毕竟，如果你想要一个 “不” 的决定，你只需去找你的上司，很容易得到一个 “不”。如果你想做某件事，不要问，去做。给他一个既成事实。不要给他一个对你说 “不” 的机会。但如果你想得到一个 “不”，得到一个 “不” 很容易。

Another personality defect is ego assertion and I’ll speak in this case of my own experience. I came from Los Alamos and in the early days I was using a machine in New York at 590 Madison Avenue where we merely rented time. I was still dressing in western clothes, big slash pockets, a bolo and all those things. I vaguely noticed that I was not getting as good service as other people. So I set out to measure. You came in and you waited for your turn; I felt I was not getting a fair deal. I said to myself, `Why? No Vice President at IBM said, Give Hamming a bad time’. It is the secretaries at the bottom who are doing this. When a slot appears, they’ll rush to find someone to slip in, but they go out and find somebody else. Now, why? I haven’t mistreated them.‘’ Answer, I wasn’t dressing the way they felt somebody in that situation should. It came down to just that - I wasn’t dressing properly. I had to make the decision - was I going to assert my ego and dress the way I wanted to and have it steadily drain my effort from my professional life, or was I going to appear to conform better? I decided I would make an effort to appear to conform properly. The moment I did, I got much better service. And now, as an old colorful character, I get better service than other people.

另一个个性缺陷是自我肯定，我将以我自己的经历为例来谈谈这个问题。我来自洛斯阿拉莫斯，在早期，我在纽约麦迪逊大道 590 号使用一台机器，我们只是租用时间。我仍然穿着西部服装，大斜插口袋，波洛领带和所有这些东西。我隐约注意到，我没有得到和其他人一样好的服务。所以我开始测量。你走进来，等着轮到你；我觉得我没有得到公平的对待。我问自己：“为什么？IBM 没有哪个副总裁说，‘给汉明难堪’。是底层的秘书们在这么做。当出现一个空位时，她们会急忙找人插进来，但她们却去找了别人。那么，为什么呢？我没有虐待过她们。” 答案是我没有按照她们认为的那种情况下的人应该穿的衣服来打扮。就是这么简单 —— 我没有穿得得体。我不得不做出决定 —— 我是要肯定自我，按照我想要的方式打扮，并且让它不断地从我的专业生活中消耗我的精力，还是要表现得更符合规范？我决定我要努力表现得更符合规范。我这么做了之后，我得到了更好的服务。现在，作为一个老资格的有个性的人，我得到的服务比其他人都要好。

You should dress according to the expectations of the audience spoken to. If I am going to give an address at the MIT computer center, I dress with a bolo and an old corduroy jacket or something else. I know enough not to let my clothes, my appearance, my manners get in the way of what I care about. An enormous number of scientists feel they must assert their ego and do their thing their way. They have got to be able to do this, that, or the other thing, and they pay a steady price.

你应该根据听众的期望来穿着。如果我要在麻省理工学院计算机中心发表演讲，我会穿着波洛领带，旧灯芯绒夹克或别的什么。我懂得不要让我的衣服、我的外表、我的举止妨碍我所关心的事情。大量的科学家觉得他们必须肯定自我，按他们的方式做事。他们必须能够做这个、那个或别的什么，他们为此付出了持续的代价。

John Tukey almost always dressed very casually. He would go into an important office and it would take a long time before the other fellow realized that this is a first-class man and he had better listen. For a long time John has had to overcome this kind of hostility. It’s wasted effort! I didn’t say you should conform; I said The appearance of conforming gets you a long way.‘’ If you chose to assert your ego in any number of ways, I am going to do it my way,‘’ you pay a small steady price throughout the whole of your professional career. And this, over a whole lifetime, adds up to an enormous amount of needless trouble.

约翰・图基几乎总是穿着非常随便。他会走进一个重要的办公室，过很长时间对方才会意识到这是一个一流的人物，他最好认真听。很长一段时间里，约翰不得不克服这种敌意。这是浪费精力！我不是说你应该顺从；我说的是 “表面上的顺从会让你走得更远。” 如果你选择以无数种方式肯定自我，“我要按我的方式去做，” 在整个职业生涯中，你会付出小小的、稳定的代价。而这一辈子加起来，就会是一个巨大的、不必要的麻烦。

By taking the trouble to tell jokes to the secretaries and being a little friendly, I got superb secretarial help. For instance, one time for some idiot reason all the reproducing services at Murray Hill were tied up. Don’t ask me how, but they were. I wanted something done. My secretary called up somebody at Holmdel, hopped the company car, made the hour-long trip down and got it reproduced, and then came back. It was a payoff for the times I had made an effort to cheer her up, tell her jokes and be friendly; it was that little extra work that later paid off for me. By realizing you have to use the system and studying how to get the system to do your work, you learn how to adapt the system to your desires. Or you can fight it steadily, as a small undeclared war, for the whole of your life.

我费力地给秘书们讲笑话，和她们友好相处，我得到了出色的秘书帮助。例如，有一次，由于某种愚蠢的原因，默里山所有的复制服务都被占用了。别问我怎么搞的，反正就是被占用了。我想要把某件事做了。我的秘书给霍姆德尔的某个人打了电话，坐上公司的车，花了整整一个小时赶过去，把东西复制了，然后又回来了。这是对我曾经努力让她高兴起来，给她讲笑话，和她友好相处的回报；正是那些额外的一点点工作，后来给我带来了回报。通过意识到你必须利用这个系统，并研究如何让这个系统为你工作，你学会了如何使这个系统适应你的愿望。或者你可以不断地与它作斗争，就像一场小小的未宣战的战争，在你的一生中都是这样。

And I think John Tukey paid a terrible price needlessly. He was a genius anyhow, but I think it would have been far better, and far simpler, had he been willing to conform a little bit instead of ego asserting. He is going to dress the way he wants all of the time. It applies not only to dress but to a thousand other things; people will continue to fight the system. Not that you shouldn’t occasionally!

我认为约翰・图基不必要地付出了可怕的代价。他反正是个天才，但我认为，如果他愿意稍微顺从一点，而不是自我肯定，情况会好得多，也简单得多。他总是按照他想要的方式去打扮。这不仅适用于穿着，还适用于一千种其他事情；人们会继续与系统作斗争。并不是说你不应该偶尔这样做！

When they moved the library from the middle of Murray Hill to the far end, a friend of mine put in a request for a bicycle. Well, the organization was not dumb. They waited awhile and sent back a map of the grounds saying, Will you please indicate on this map what paths you are going to take so we can get an insurance policy covering you.‘’ A few more weeks went by. They then asked, Where are you going to store the bicycle and how will it be locked so we can do so and so.‘’ He finally realized that of course he was going to be red-taped to death so he gave in. He rose to be the President of Bell Laboratories.

当他们把图书馆从默里山的中间搬到最远端时，我的一个朋友申请了一辆自行车。这个组织并不傻。他们等了一段时间，然后寄回了一张场地的地图，说：“请你在这张地图上标明你要走哪条路，以便我们可以为你投保。” 又过了几周。他们接着问：“你要把自行车放在哪里，你将如何锁上它，以便我们可以如此这般。” 他最终意识到，当然，他将被繁文缛节弄得死去活来，所以他屈服了。他后来成为了贝尔实验室的总裁。

Barney Oliver was a good man. He wrote a letter one time to the IEEE. At that time the official shelf space at Bell Labs was so much and the height of the IEEE Proceedings at that time was larger; and since you couldn’t change the size of the official shelf space he wrote this letter to the IEEE Publication person saying, ``Since so many IEEE members were at Bell Labs and since the official space was so high the journal size should be changed.‘’ He sent it for his boss’s signature. Back came a carbon with his signature, but he still doesn’t know whether the original was sent or not. I am not saying you shouldn’t make gestures of reform. I am saying that my study of able people is that they don’t get themselves committed to that kind of warfare. They play it a little bit and drop it and get on with their work.

巴尼・奥利弗是个好人。他曾经给 IEEE 写过一封信。当时贝尔实验室的官方书架空间是这么多，而 IEEE 学报的高度要大一些；由于你不能改变官方书架的空间大小，他给 IEEE 出版人写了这封信，说：“由于许多 IEEE 会员都在贝尔实验室，而且官方空间这么大，期刊的大小应该改变。” 他把信送给他上司签字。回来的是一个有他签名的副本，但他仍然不知道原件是否寄出了。我不是说你不应该做出改革的姿态。我是说，我对有能力的人的研究表明，他们不会让自己陷入那种战争。他们稍微玩一下，然后放弃，继续他们的工作。

Many a second-rate fellow gets caught up in some little twitting of the system, and carries it through to warfare. He expends his energy in a foolish project. Now you are going to tell me that somebody has to change the system. I agree; somebody’s has to. Which do you want to be? The person who changes the system or the person who does first-class science? Which person is it that you want to be? Be clear, when you fight the system and struggle with it, what you are doing, how far to go out of amusement, and how much to waste your effort fighting the system. My advice is to let somebody else do it and you get on with becoming a first-class scientist. Very few of you have the ability to both reform the system and become a first-class scientist.

许多二流的人物都会陷入对系统的小小嘲弄，并将其发展成一场战争。他在一个愚蠢的项目上耗费了他的精力。现在你会告诉我，有人必须改变这个系统。我同意；有人必须这么做。你想成为哪一种人呢？是那个改变系统的人，还是那个做一流科学的人？你想成为哪一种人呢？当你与系统作斗争并为之奋斗时，要清楚你在做什么，为了好玩要走多远，以及要浪费多少精力去和系统作斗争。我的建议是让别人去做这件事，而你去成为一流的科学家。你们中很少有人既有能力改革这个系统，又能成为一流的科学家。

On the other hand, we can’t always give in. There are times when a certain amount of rebellion is sensible. I have observed almost all scientists enjoy a certain amount of twitting the system for the sheer love of it. What it comes down to basically is that you cannot be original in one area without having originality in others. Originality is being different. You can’t be an original scientist without having some other original characteristics. But many a scientist has let his quirks in other places make him pay a far higher price than is necessary for the ego satisfaction he or she gets. I’m not against all ego assertion; I’m against some.

另一方面，我们也不能总是屈服。有时候，一定程度的反抗是合理的。我观察到几乎所有的科学家都喜欢纯粹出于对它的喜爱而对系统进行一定程度的嘲弄。归根结底，基本上是你不能在一个领域具有独创性，而在其他领域却没有独创性。独创性就是与众不同。如果你不是一个具有某些其他独创性特征的人，你就不能成为一个具有独创性的科学家。但是，许多科学家却让他们的其他怪癖使他们付出了比他们得到的自我满足感更高的代价。我不是反对所有的自我肯定；我只是反对其中的一些。

Another fault is anger. Often a scientist becomes angry, and this is no way to handle things. Amusement, yes, anger, no. Anger is misdirected. You should follow and cooperate rather than struggle against the system all the time.

另一个错误是愤怒。科学家常常会变得愤怒，而这是处理事情的错误方式。娱乐是可以的，愤怒则不行。愤怒是错误的引导。你应该跟随并合作，而不是总是与系统作对。

Another thing you should look for is the positive side of things instead of the negative. I have already given you several examples, and there are many, many more; how, given the situation, by changing the way I looked at it, I converted what was apparently a defect to an asset. I’ll give you another example. I am an egotistical person; there is no doubt about it. I knew that most people who took a sabbatical to write a book, didn’t finish it on time. So before I left, I told all my friends that when I come back, that book was going to be done! Yes, I would have it done - I’d have been ashamed to come back without it! I used my ego to make myself behave the way I wanted to. I bragged about something so I’d have to perform. I found out many times, like a cornered rat in a real trap, I was surprisingly capable. I have found that it paid to say, ``Oh yes, I’ll get the answer for you Tuesday,‘’ not having any idea how to do it. By Sunday night I was really hard thinking on how I was going to deliver by Tuesday. I often put my pride on the line and sometimes I failed, but as I said, like a cornered rat I’m surprised how often I did a good job. I think you need to learn to use yourself. I think you need to know how to convert a situation from one view to another which would increase the chance of success.

你应该寻找事情的积极面，而不是消极面。我已经给你举了好几个例子，还有很多很多；在给定的情况下，通过改变我的看法，我将一个明显的缺陷变成了一个优势。我再给你举一个例子。我是一个自负的人；这是毫无疑问的。我知道，大多数利用休假去写书的人，都没有按时完成。所以在我离开之前，我告诉我的所有朋友，当我回来的时候，那本书将会完成！是的，我会完成它 —— 如果我没有完成，我会感到羞耻！我利用我的自负让我按照我想要的方式行事。我吹嘘某件事，所以我不得不去做。我多次发现，就像一个在真正的陷阱里被困住的老鼠，我非常有能力。我发现，说 “哦，是的，我将在周二为你找到答案”，而我不知道该怎么做。到了周日晚上，我真的很努力地思考我该如何在周二之前完成。我经常把我的自尊心放在一边，有时我失败了，但正如我所说的，就像一只被困住的老鼠，我惊讶地发现自己很多时候都做得很好。我认为你需要学会利用自己。我认为你需要知道如何将一种情况从一个观点转换到另一个观点，这将增加成功的可能性。

Now self-delusion in humans is very, very common. There are enumerable ways of you changing a thing and kidding yourself and making it look some other way. When you ask, Why didn’t you do such and such,‘’ the person has a thousand alibis. If you look at the history of science, usually these days there are 10 people right there ready, and we pay off for the person who is there first. The other nine fellows say, Well, I had the idea but I didn’t do it and so on and so on.‘’ There are so many alibis. Why weren’t you first? Why didn’t you do it right? Don’t try an alibi. Don’t try and kid yourself. You can tell other people all the alibis you want. I don’t mind. But to yourself try to be honest.

现在，人类的自我欺骗是非常非常常见的。你有很多方法可以改变一件事，欺骗自己，让它看起来像是别的东西。当你问，“你为什么不做这个那个呢？” 那个人有一千个借口。如果你看看科学史，通常现在有 10 个人就在那里准备好了，而我们却奖励了第一个到达那里的人。其他九个人说：“好吧，我有这个想法，但我没有做，等等等等。” 有这么多的借口。为什么你不是第一个呢？为什么你没有做对呢？不要找借口。不要试图欺骗自己。你可以告诉别人你所有的借口。我不介意。但对自己要尽量诚实。

If you really want to be a first-class scientist you need to know yourself, your weaknesses, your strengths, and your bad faults, like my egotism. How can you convert a fault to an asset? How can you convert a situation where you haven’t got enough manpower to move into a direction when that’s exactly what you need to do? I say again that I have seen, as I studied the history, the successful scientist changed the viewpoint and what was a defect became an asset.

如果你真的想成为一个一流的科学家，你需要了解自己，你的弱点，你的优势，以及你的缺点，比如我的自负。你如何能将一个缺点变成一个优势呢？你如何能将一个你没有足够人力去开展一个方向的情况变成一个优势，而当你恰恰需要做这件事的时候呢？我再说一次，我看到过，当我研究历史的时候，成功的科学家改变了观点，一个缺陷变成了一个优势。

In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don’t succeed are: they don’t work on important problems, they don’t become emotionally involved, they don’t try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don’t. They keep saying that it is a matter of luck. I’ve told you how easy it is; furthermore I’ve told you how to reform. Therefore, go forth and become great scientists!

总结一下，我认为许多人本来可以取得伟大成就，但却没有成功，其中一些原因是：他们不从事重要的问题，他们没有全身心地投入，他们不尝试将困难的事情转变为容易做到的但仍然重要的其他情况，他们不断地给自己找借口，说这是运气的问题。我告诉过你这有多容易；而且我还告诉过你如何改革。因此，去吧，成为一个伟大的科学家！

(End of the formal part of the talk.)

（演讲的正式部分结束。）

DISCUSSION - QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

讨论-问答

A. G. Chynoweth: Well that was 50 minutes of concentrated wisdom and observations accumulated over a fantastic career; I lost track of all the observations that were striking home. Some of them are very very timely. One was the plea for more computer capacity; I was hearing nothing but that this morning from several people, over and over again. So that was right on the mark today even though here we are 20 - 30 years after when you were making similar remarks, Dick. I can think of all sorts of lessons that all of us can draw from your talk. And for one, as I walk around the halls in the future I hope I won’t see as many closed doors in Bellcore. That was one observation I thought was very intriguing.

A.G. 奇诺思：这可是 50 分钟的集中智慧和观察，是在一段精彩的职业生涯中积累起来的；我跟不上那些切中要害的观察了。其中有些是非常非常及时的。有一个是呼吁更多的计算机容量；今天早上我从好几个人那里听到的都是这个，反反复复。所以这在今天是切中要害的，尽管我们在这里，距离你做出类似评论的时候已经有 20 - 30 年了，迪克。我可以想到我们大家都能从你的演讲中学到的各种教训。其中有一点，我希望当我以后在大厅里走来走去的时候，我不会在贝尔核心看到那么多关着的门。我觉得这是一个非常有趣的观察。

Thank you very, very much indeed Dick; that was a wonderful recollection. I’ll now open it up for questions. I’m sure there are many people who would like to take up on some of the points that Dick was making.

非常非常感谢你，迪克；这是一个精彩的回忆。现在我来开放提问。我相信有很多人会想就迪克刚才提到的一些观点进行提问。

Hamming: First let me respond to Alan Chynoweth about computing. I had computing in research and for 10 years I kept telling my management, Get that !&@#% machine out of research. We are being forced to run problems all the time. We can’t do research because were too busy operating and running the computing machines.‘’ Finally the message got through. They were going to move computing out of research to someplace else. I was persona non grata to say the least and I was surprised that people didn’t kick my shins because everybody was having their toy taken away from them. I went in to Ed David’s office and said, Look Ed, you’ve got to give your researchers a machine. If you give them a great big machine, we’ll be back in the same trouble we were before, so busy keeping it going we can’t think. Give them the smallest machine you can because they are very able people. They will learn how to do things on a small machine instead of mass computing.‘’ As far as I’m concerned, that’s how UNIX arose. We gave them a moderately small machine and they decided to make it do great things. They had to come up with a system to do it on. It is called UNIX!

汉明：首先让我回应一下艾伦・奇诺思关于计算的问题。我在研究中使用了计算，10 年来我一直在告诉我的管理层，“把那台该死的机器从研究中拿出去。我们被迫一直在运行问题。我们无法进行研究，因为我们太忙了，忙着操作和运行计算机。” 最终，这个信息传达过去了。他们打算把计算从研究中移走，放到别的地方。我至少是个不受欢迎的人，我很惊讶人们没有踢我的小腿，因为每个人的东西都被拿走了。我走进埃德・戴维的办公室说：“听着，埃德，你得给你的研究人员一台机器。如果你给他们一台很大的机器，我们将再次陷入以前的困境，忙着让它运转，我们无法思考。给他们最小的机器，因为他们是非常有能力的人。他们将学会在小机器上做事情，而不是大规模计算。” 就我而言，这就是 UNIX 产生的原因。我们给了他们一台中等大小的机器，他们决定让它做出伟大的事情。他们不得不想出一个系统来实现它。它被称为 UNIX！

A. G. Chynoweth: I just have to pick up on that one. In our present environment, Dick, while we wrestle with some of the red tape attributed to, or required by, the regulators, there is one quote that one exasperated AVP came up with and I’ve used it over and over again. He growled that, ``UNIX was never a deliverable!‘’

A.G. 奇诺思：我必须抓住那一点。在我们目前的环境中，迪克，当我们与一些归因于或由监管者要求的繁文缛节作斗争时，有一个引语是一个愤怒的助理副总裁想出来的，我一次又一次地使用了它。他抱怨说：“UNIX 从来不是一个可交付的产品！”

Question: What about personal stress? Does that seem to make a difference?

提问：个人压力呢？那似乎有区别吗？

Hamming: Yes, it does. If you don’t get emotionally involved, it doesn’t. I had incipient ulcers most of the years that I was at Bell Labs. I have since gone off to the Naval Postgraduate School and laid back somewhat, and now my health is much better. But if you want to be a great scientist you’re going to have to put up with stress. You can lead a nice life; you can be a nice guy or you can be a great scientist. But nice guys end last, is what Leo Durocher said. If you want to lead a nice happy life with a lot of recreation and everything else, you’ll lead a nice life.

汉明：是的，有区别。如果你不全身心投入，就没有区别。我在贝尔实验室的大部分时间里都有潜在的溃疡。后来我去了海军研究生院，稍微放松了一些，现在我的健康状况好多了。但如果你想成为一个伟大的科学家，你将不得不承受压力。你可以过上舒适的生活；你可以做一个好人，或者你可以成为一个伟大的科学家。但好人总是最后成功，正如利奥・杜罗彻所说。如果你想过上一种愉快的生活，有很多娱乐和所有其他的东西，你将过上一种舒适的生活。

Question: The remarks about having courage, no one could argue with; but those of us who have gray hairs or who are well established don’t have to worry too much. But what I sense among the young people these days is a real concern over the risk taking in a highly competitive environment. Do you have any words of wisdom on this?

提问：关于要有勇气的评论，没有人会反对；但我们这些头发灰白或者已经很有成就的人不必太担心。但我感觉到现在的年轻人真正担心的是在一个高度竞争的环境中冒险。你对这个问题有什么好的建议吗？

Hamming: I’ll quote Ed David more. Ed David was concerned about the general loss of nerve in our society. It does seem to me that we’ve gone through various periods. Coming out of the war, coming out of Los Alamos where we built the bomb, coming out of building the radars and so on, there came into the mathematics department, and the research area, a group of people with a lot of guts. They’ve just seen things done; they’ve just won a war which was fantastic. We had reasons for having courage and therefore we did a great deal. I can’t arrange that situation to do it again. I cannot blame the present generation for not having it, but I agree with what you say; I just cannot attach blame to it. It doesn’t seem to me they have the desire for greatness; they lack the courage to do it. But we had, because we were in a favorable circumstance to have it; we just came through a tremendously successful war. In the war we were looking very, very bad for a long while; it was a very desperate struggle as you well know. And our success, I think, gave us courage and self confidence; that’s why you see, beginning in the late forties through the fifties, a tremendous productivity at the labs which was stimulated from the earlier times. Because many of us were earlier forced to learn other things - we were forced to learn the things we didn’t want to learn, we were forced to have an open door - and then we could exploit those things we learned. It is true, and I can’t do anything about it; I cannot blame the present generation either. It’s just a fact.

汉明：我更多地引用埃德・戴维的话。埃德・戴维对我们社会普遍存在的怯懦感到担忧。在我看来，我们似乎经历了不同的时期。从战争中走出来，从洛斯阿拉莫斯走出来，我们在那里制造了原子弹，从制造雷达等工作中走出来，有一群人带着很大的勇气来到了数学系和研究领域。他们刚刚看到事情被做成；他们刚刚赢得了一场令人惊叹的战争。我们有理由有勇气，因此我们做了很多事情。我无法安排那种情况再来一次。我不能责怪这一代人没有这种勇气，但我同意你说的；我只是不能把责任归咎于他们。在我看来，他们似乎没有对伟大的渴望；他们缺乏去做的勇气。但我们有，因为我们处于一个有利于拥有它的环境中；我们刚刚经历了一场极其成功的战争。在战争中，我们很长时间看起来都非常非常糟糕；这是一场非常绝望的斗争，这是你非常清楚的。我想，我们的成功给了我们勇气和自信；这就是为什么你看到，从 40 年代末到 50 年代，实验室的生产力非常巨大，这种生产力是从早期激发出来的。因为，我们中的许多人被迫在早期学习其他东西 —— 我们被迫学习我们不想学的东西，我们被迫有一个开放的头脑 —— 然后我们就可以利用我们所学到的东西。这是事实，我对此无能为力；我也不能责怪这一代人。这只是事实。

Question: Is there something management could or should do?

提问：管理层能做或应该做些什么呢？

Hamming: Management can do very little. If you want to talk about managing research, that’s a totally different talk. I’d take another hour doing that. This talk is about how the individual gets very successful research done in spite of anything the management does or in spite of any other opposition. And how do you do it? Just as I observe people doing it. It’s just that simple and that hard!

汉明：管理层几乎什么都做不了。如果你想谈论如何管理研究，那完全是另一个话题。我得再花一个小时来讲那个。这个演讲是关于个人如何在管理层所做的任何事情或任何其他反对意见的情况下完成非常成功的研究。你怎么做呢？就像我观察人们做的那样。就这么简单，就这么难！

Question: Is brainstorming a daily process?

提问：头脑风暴是一个日常过程吗？

Hamming: Once that was a very popular thing, but it seems not to have paid off. For myself I find it desirable to talk to other people; but a session of brainstorming is seldom worthwhile. I do go in to strictly talk to somebody and say, Look, I think there has to be something here. Here’s what I think I see …‘’ and then begin talking back and forth. But you want to pick capable people. To use another analogy, you know the idea called the critical mass.’ If you have enough stuff you have critical mass. There is also the idea I used to call sound absorbers.’ When you get too many sound absorbers, you give out an idea and they merely say, Yes, yes, yes.‘’ What you want to do is get that critical mass in action; Yes, that reminds me of so and so,‘’ or, Have you thought about that or this?‘’ When you talk to other people, you want to get rid of those sound absorbers who are nice people but merely say, ``Oh yes,‘’ and to find those who will stimulate you right back.

汉明：头脑风暴曾经是一个非常流行的东西，但它似乎并没有得到回报。对我来说，我发现和别人交谈是可取的；但头脑风暴会议很少有价值。我确实会去找某个人，严格地说：“看，我觉得这里一定有东西。我觉得我看到了……” 然后开始来回交谈。但你要挑选有能力的人。用另一个比喻来说，你知道所谓的 “临界质量” 的概念。如果你有足够的东西，你就有临界质量。还有一个我过去称之为 “声音吸收器” 的概念。当你有太多的声音吸收器时，你提出一个想法，他们只会说：“是的，是的，是的。” 你想要做的是让临界质量发挥作用；“是的，这让我想起了某某某，” 或者，“你有没有想过这个或那个？” 当你和别人交谈时，你要摆脱那些声音吸收器，他们是好人，但只会说，“哦，是的，” 并找到那些会直接刺激你的人。

For example, you couldn’t talk to John Pierce without being stimulated very quickly. There were a group of other people I used to talk with. For example there was Ed Gilbert; I used to go down to his office regularly and ask him questions and listen and come back stimulated. I picked my people carefully with whom I did or whom I didn’t brainstorm because the sound absorbers are a curse. They are just nice guys; they fill the whole space and they contribute nothing except they absorb ideas and the new ideas just die away instead of echoing on. Yes, I find it necessary to talk to people. I think people with closed doors fail to do this so they fail to get their ideas sharpened, such as ``Did you ever notice something over here?‘’ I never knew anything about it - I can go over and look. Somebody points the way. On my visit here, I have already found several books that I must read when I get home. I talk to people and ask questions when I think they can answer me and give me clues that I do not know about. I go out and look!

例如，你不能和约翰・皮尔斯交谈而不被他迅速地激发起来。还有一群其他的人，我过去常常和他们交谈。例如，有埃德・吉尔伯特；我过去常常定期去他的办公室，向他提问，倾听，然后带着激发回来。我非常小心地挑选我和谁一起头脑风暴，或者不和谁一起头脑风暴，因为声音吸收器是个祸害。他们只是好人；他们占据了整个空间，他们除了吸收想法之外什么也不贡献，新的想法就这样消失了，而不是继续回响。是的，我发现和人交谈是必要的。我认为那些关着门的人没有做到这一点，所以他们没有让他们的想法得到磨砺，比如 “你有没有注意到那边的事情？” 我不知道任何关于它的事 —— 我可以过去看看。有人指了路。在我这次访问中，我已经发现了好几本书，我回到家后必须去读。我向人们提问，当我认为他们可以回答我，并给我一些我不知道的线索时。我出去看看！

Question: What kind of tradeoffs did you make in allocating your time for reading and writing and actually doing research?

提问：你在分配时间用于阅读、写作和实际进行研究时做了什么样的权衡呢？

Hamming: I believed, in my early days, that you should spend at least as much time in the polish and presentation as you did in the original research. Now at least 50% of the time must go for the presentation. It’s a big, big number.

汉明：在我早年的日子里，我相信你应该至少花和你最初的研究一样多的时间在润色和展示上。现在至少 50% 的时间必须花在展示上。这是一个很大的数字。

Question: How much effort should go into library work?

提问：应该花多少精力在图书馆工作上呢？

Hamming: It depends upon the field. I will say this about it. There was a fellow at Bell Labs, a very, very, smart guy. He was always in the library; he read everything. If you wanted references, you went to him and he gave you all kinds of references. But in the middle of forming these theories, I formed a proposition: there would be no effect named after him in the long run. He is now retired from Bell Labs and is an Adjunct Professor. He was very valuable; I’m not questioning that. He wrote some very good Physical Review articles; but there’s no effect named after him because he read too much. If you read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you’ve thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. So yes, you need to keep up. You need to keep up more to find out what the problems are than to read to find the solutions. The reading is necessary to know what is going on and what is possible. But reading to get the solutions does not seem to be the way to do great research. So I’ll give you two answers. You read; but it is not the amount, it is the way you read that counts.

汉明：这取决于这个领域。我要这样说。在贝尔实验室有一个家伙，一个非常非常聪明的人。他总是泡在图书馆里；他什么都读。如果你想要参考文献，你就去找他，他会给你各种各样的参考文献。但在形成这些理论的过程中，我形成了一个观点：从长远来看，不会有任何效应以他的名字命名。他现在已经从贝尔实验室退休了，是一名兼职教授。他很有价值；我不是在质疑这一点。他写了一些非常好的《物理评论》文章；但没有以他的名字命名的效应，因为他读得太多了。如果你一直读别人做过的事情，你就会按照他们的思维方式去思考。如果你想思考新的、不同的想法，那么就做许多有创造力的人所做的 —— 把问题弄清楚，然后拒绝去看任何答案，直到你仔细思考了你会如何去做，你如何能稍微改变问题使其成为正确的问题。所以是的，你需要跟上。你更多地需要跟上，以了解问题是什么，而不是去读以寻找解决方案。阅读是必要的，以了解正在发生的事情和什么是可能的。但阅读以获得解决方案似乎不是做出伟大研究的方法。所以我要给你两个答案。你去读；但重要的不是数量，而是你阅读的方式。

Question: How do you get your name attached to things?

提问：你如何让你的名字与某件事联系起来呢？

Hamming: By doing great work. I’ll tell you the hamming window one. I had given Tukey a hard time, quite a few times, and I got a phone call from him from Princeton to me at Murray Hill. I knew that he was writing up power spectra and he asked me if I would mind if he called a certain window a Hamming window.‘’ And I said to him, Come on, John; you know perfectly well I did only a small part of the work but you also did a lot.‘’ He said, ``Yes, Hamming, but you contributed a lot of small things; you’re entitled to some credit.‘’ So he called it the hamming window. Now, let me go on. I had twitted John frequently about true greatness. I said true greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier - when it’s spelled with a lower case letter. That’s how the hamming window came about.

汉明：通过做出伟大的工作。我来告诉你汉明窗的故事。我曾经好几次给图基制造麻烦，我接到他从普林斯顿打给我的电话，当时我在默里山。我知道他正在撰写功率谱，他问我，我是否介意他把某个窗称为 “汉明窗”。我对他说：“约翰，你知道我只做了很少一部分工作，但你也做了很多。” 他说：“是的，汉明，但你做出了很多小的贡献；你有权得到一些荣誉。” 所以他把它称为汉明窗。现在，让我继续说。我曾经多次取笑约翰的真正伟大。我说真正的伟大是当你的名字像安培、瓦特和傅里叶一样 —— 用小写字母拼写时。这就是汉明窗的由来。

Question: Dick, would you care to comment on the relative effectiveness between giving talks, writing papers, and writing books?

提问：迪克，你愿意就做演讲、写论文和写书之间的相对有效性发表评论吗？

Hamming: In the short-haul, papers are very important if you want to stimulate someone tomorrow. If you want to get recognition long-haul, it seems to me writing books is more contribution because most of us need orientation. In this day of practically infinite knowledge, we need orientation to find our way. Let me tell you what infinite knowledge is. Since from the time of Newton to now, we have come close to doubling knowledge every 17 years, more or less. And we cope with that, essentially, by specialization. In the next 340 years at that rate, there will be 20 doublings, i.e. a million, and there will be a million fields of specialty for every one field now. It isn’t going to happen. The present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools. I believe that books which try to digest, coordinate, get rid of the duplication, get rid of the less fruitful methods and present the underlying ideas clearly of what we know now, will be the things the future generations will value. Public talks are necessary; private talks are necessary; written papers are necessary. But I am inclined to believe that, in the long-haul, books which leave out what’s not essential are more important than books which tell you everything because you don’t want to know everything. I don’t want to know that much about penguins is the usual reply. You just want to know the essence.

汉明：在短期内，如果你想在明天激发某人，论文是非常重要的。如果你想在长期内得到认可，我认为写书的贡献更大，因为我们大多数人都需要指导。在这个几乎拥有无限知识的时代，我们需要指导来找到我们的方向。让我告诉你什么是无限的知识。从牛顿时代到现在，我们的知识大约每 17 年翻一番。我们主要通过专业化来应对这种知识增长。按照这个速度，在接下来的 340 年里，将会有 20 次翻倍，即一百万次，现在每一个领域都将有一百万个专业领域。这种情况是不会发生的。知识的这种增长最终会自我限制，直到我们得到不同的工具。我相信，那些试图消化、协调、消除重复、摒弃不太有效的方法，并清晰地呈现我们现在所知道的基础思想的书，将是未来几代人所看重的。公开演讲是必要的；私下交谈是必要的；书面论文也是必要的。但我倾向于相信，在长期内，那些省略了非本质内容的书比那些告诉你一切的书更重要，因为你并不想知道一切。通常的回答是，我不想了解那么多关于企鹅的事情。你只是想知道本质的东西。

Question: You mentioned the problem of the Nobel Prize and the subsequent notoriety of what was done to some of the careers. Isn’t that kind of a much more broad problem of fame? What can one do?

提问：你提到了诺贝尔奖和随后对一些职业生涯所做的事情的臭名昭著的问题。这不是一种更广泛的名声问题吗？一个人能做什么呢？

Hamming: Some things you could do are the following. Somewhere around every seven years make a significant, if not complete, shift in your field. Thus, I shifted from numerical analysis, to hardware, to software, and so on, periodically, because you tend to use up your ideas. When you go to a new field, you have to start over as a baby. You are no longer the big mukity muk and you can start back there and you can start planting those acorns which will become the giant oaks. Shannon, I believe, ruined himself. In fact when he left Bell Labs, I said, That’s the end of Shannon’s scientific career.‘’ I received a lot of flak from my friends who said that Shannon was just as smart as ever. I said, Yes, he’ll be just as smart, but that’s the end of his scientific career,‘’ and I truly believe it was.

汉明：你可以做的一些事情如下。大约每七年左右，在你的领域里做一个显著的，如果不是完全的，转变。因此，我定期地从数值分析转向硬件，转向软件，等等，因为你倾向于用完你的想法。当你进入一个新领域时，你必须重新开始，就像一个婴儿一样。你不再是一个大人物，你可以从那里重新开始，你可以开始播撒那些将会长成参天大树的小橡子。我相信，香农毁了自己。事实上，当他离开贝尔实验室时，我说：“这就是香农的科学生涯的终结。” 我受到了朋友们的很多批评，他们说香农和以前一样聪明。我说：“是的，他会和以前一样聪明，但这将是他的科学生涯的终结，” 我真的相信这是真的。

You have to change. You get tired after a while; you use up your originality in one field. You need to get something nearby. I’m not saying that you shift from music to theoretical physics to English literature; I mean within your field you should shift areas so that you don’t go stale. You couldn’t get away with forcing a change every seven years, but if you could, I would require a condition for doing research, being that you will change your field of research every seven years with a reasonable definition of what it means, or at the end of 10 years, management has the right to compel you to change. I would insist on a change because I’m serious. What happens to the old fellows is that they get a technique going; they keep on using it. They were marching in that direction which was right then, but the world changes. There’s the new direction; but the old fellows are still marching in their former direction.

你必须做出改变。过了一段时间后，你会感到疲惫；你在某个领域会用完你的创造力。你需要转向一些相近的东西。我不是说你要从音乐转向理论物理，再转向英国文学；我的意思是，在你的领域内，你应该改变研究方向，这样你就不会变得陈腐。你不可能每七年强迫自己改变一次，但如果可以的话，我会要求一个做研究的条件，即每七年改变你的研究领域，对它的含义有一个合理的定义，或者在 10 年结束时，管理层有权强迫你做出改变。我会坚持改变，因为我是认真的。那些老家伙们发生的事情是，他们掌握了一种技术；他们继续使用它。他们朝着当时正确的方向前进，但世界在变化。有了新的方向；但那些老家伙们仍然朝着他们以前的方向前进。

You need to get into a new field to get new viewpoints, and before you use up all the old ones. You can do something about this, but it takes effort and energy. It takes courage to say, Yes, I will give up my great reputation.‘’ For example, when error correcting codes were well launched, having these theories, I said, Hamming, you are going to quit reading papers in the field; you are going to ignore it completely; you are going to try and do something else other than coast on that.‘’ I deliberately refused to go on in that field. I wouldn’t even read papers to try to force myself to have a chance to do something else. I managed myself, which is what I’m preaching in this whole talk. Knowing many of my own faults, I manage myself. I have a lot of faults, so I’ve got a lot of problems, i.e. a lot of possibilities of management.

你需要进入一个新领域以获得新的观点，并且在用完所有旧的观点之前。你可以做些什么来改变这种状况，但这需要努力和精力。需要有勇气说：“是的，我将放弃我伟大的声誉。” 例如，当纠错码被很好地推广，有了这些理论时，我说：“汉明，你将停止阅读该领域的论文；你将完全忽略它；你将尝试做些别的事情，而不是靠这个混日子。” 我故意拒绝继续在这个领域发展。我甚至不会去阅读论文，试图强迫自己有机会去做些别的事情。我管理自己，这就是我在整个演讲中所宣扬的。了解我自己的许多缺点，我管理自己。我有很多缺点，所以我有很多问题，也就是说，有很多管理的可能性。

Question: Would you compare research and management?

提问：你会比较研究和管理吗？

Hamming: If you want to be a great researcher, you won’t make it being president of the company. If you want to be president of the company, that’s another thing. I’m not against being president of the company. I just don’t want to be. I think Ian Ross does a good job as President of Bell Labs. I’m not against it; but you have to be clear on what you want. Furthermore, when you’re young, you may have picked wanting to be a great scientist, but as you live longer, you may change your mind. For instance, I went to my boss, Bode, one day and said, Why did you ever become department head? Why didn’t you just be a good scientist?‘’ He said, Hamming, I had a vision of what mathematics should be in Bell Laboratories. And I saw if that vision was going to be realized, I had to make it happen; I had to be department head.‘’ When your vision of what you want to do is what you can do single-handedly, then you should pursue it. The day your vision, what you think needs to be done, is bigger than what you can do single-handedly, then you have to move toward management. And the bigger the vision is, the farther in management you have to go. If you have a vision of what the whole laboratory should be, or the whole Bell System, you have to get there to make it happen. You can’t make it happen from the bottom very easily. It depends upon what goals and what desires you have. And as they change in life, you have to be prepared to change. I chose to avoid management because I preferred to do what I could do single-handedly. But that’s the choice that I made, and it is biased. Each person is entitled to their choice. Keep an open mind. But when you do choose a path, for heaven’s sake be aware of what you have done and the choice you have made. Don’t try to do both sides.

汉明：如果你想成为一个伟大的研究人员，你不会成为公司的总裁。如果你想成为公司的总裁，那是另一回事。我不是反对成为公司的总裁。我只是不想成为。我认为伊恩・罗斯作为贝尔实验室的总裁做得很好。我不是反对；但你必须清楚你想要什么。此外，当你年轻的时候，你可能选择了想成为一个伟大的科学家，但随着你活得更久，你可能会改变主意。例如，有一天我去找我的上司博德说：“你为什么当部门负责人？你为什么不做个好科学家呢？” 他说：“汉明，我在贝尔实验室对数学应该是什么有一个愿景。我看到如果这个愿景要实现，我必须让它发生；我必须成为部门负责人。” 当你对你想做的事情的愿景是你能够独自完成的事情时，那么你应该去追求它。当你对你认为需要做的事情的愿景大于你能够独自完成的事情时，那么你就必须转向管理。而且，愿景越大，你就必须在管理上走得越远。如果你对整个实验室，或者整个贝尔系统应该是什么有一个愿景，你就必须到那里去实现它。你不能很容易地从底层实现它。这取决于你的目标和愿望。随着它们在生活中的变化，你必须准备好去改变。我选择避免管理，因为我更愿意做我能独自完成的事情。但这只是我做出的选择，这是有偏见的。每个人都有权做出自己的选择。保持开放的心态。但当你选择了一条道路时，看在上帝的份上，要清楚你已经做了什么，你做出了什么选择。不要试图同时做两边的事情。

Question: How important is one’s own expectation or how important is it to be in a group or surrounded by people who expect great work from you?

提问：一个人的期望有多重要，或者在一个团队里，或者被期望做出伟大工作的人包围着有多重要？

Hamming: At Bell Labs everyone expected good work from me - it was a big help. Everybody expects you to do a good job, so you do, if you’ve got pride. I think it’s very valuable to have first-class people around. I sought out the best people. The moment that physics table lost the best people, I left. The moment I saw that the same was true of the chemistry table, I left. I tried to go with people who had great ability so I could learn from them and who would expect great results out of me. By deliberately managing myself, I think I did much better than laissez faire.

汉明：在贝尔实验室，每个人都期望我做出好的成果 —— 这对我帮助很大。每个人都在期待你做好工作，所以如果你有自尊的话，你就会做好。我认为周围有一流的人是非常有价值的。我寻找最优秀的人。当物理学家的餐桌失去了最优秀的人时，我离开了。当我看到化学家的餐桌也是如此时，我离开了。我试图和那些有能力的人在一起，这样我就可以向他们学习，并且他们会期望我取得伟大的成果。通过有意识地管理自己，我认为我比放任自流做得要好得多。

Question: You, at the outset of your talk, minimized or played down luck; but you seemed also to gloss over the circumstances that got you to Los Alamos, that got you to Chicago, that got you to Bell Laboratories.

提问：在你的演讲开始时，你最小化或降低了运气的重要性；但你似乎也忽略了把你带到洛斯阿拉莫斯、带到芝加哥、带到贝尔实验室的情况。

Hamming: There was some luck. On the other hand I don’t know the alternate branches. Until you can say that the other branches would not have been equally or more successful, I can’t say. Is it luck the particular thing you do? For example, when I met Feynman at Los Alamos, I knew he was going to get a Nobel Prize. I didn’t know what for. But I knew darn well he was going to do great work. No matter what directions came up in the future, this man would do great work. And sure enough, he did do great work. It isn’t that you only do a little great work at this circumstance and that was luck, there are many opportunities sooner or later. There are a whole pail full of opportunities, of which, if you’re in this situation, you seize one and you’re great over there instead of over here. There is an element of luck, yes and no. Luck favors a prepared mind; luck favors a prepared person. It is not guaranteed; I don’t guarantee success as being absolutely certain. I’d say luck changes the odds, but there is some definite control on the part of the individual.

汉明：有一些运气。另一方面，我不知道其他的分支。除非你能说其他分支不会同样成功或者更成功，否则我不能说。你所做的那件特定的事情是运气吗？例如，当我在洛斯阿拉莫斯遇到费曼时，我知道他会获得诺贝尔奖。我不知道为什么。但我很清楚他会做出伟大的成果。不管未来会出现什么方向，这个人都会做出伟大的成果。果然，他做出了伟大的成果。并不是说你只在这个特定的情况下做出了一点伟大的成果，而那是运气，有很多机会迟早会出现。有很多机会，如果你处于这种情况，你会抓住其中一个，你在那里而不是在这里变得伟大。运气有它的成分，是的，也有不是。运气青睐有准备的头脑；运气青睐有准备的人。这不是肯定的；我不能保证成功是绝对确定的。我会说运气改变了几率，但个人确实有一定的控制权。

Go forth, then, and do great work!

那么，去做出伟大的成果吧！

(End of the General Research Colloquium Talk.)

（一般研究研讨会演讲结束。）

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF RICHARD HAMMING

理查德・汉明的生平简介

Richard W. Hamming was born February 11, 1915, in Chicago, Illinois. His formal education was marked by the following degrees (all in mathematics): B.S. 1937, University of Chicago; M.A. 1939, University of Nebraska; and Ph.D. 1942, University of Illinois. His early experience was obtained at Los Alamos 1945-1946, i.e. at the close of World War II, where he managed the computers used in building the first atomic bomb. From there he went directly to Bell Laboratories where he spent thirty years in various aspects of computing, numerical analysis, and management of computing, i.e. 1946-1976. On July 23, 1976 he `moved his office’ to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California where he taught, supervised research, and wrote books.

理查德・W・汉明于 1915 年 2 月 11 日出生于伊利诺斯州芝加哥。他的正规教育包括以下学位（全部是数学）：1937 年芝加哥大学理学士；1939 年内布拉斯加大学文学硕士；1942 年伊利诺斯大学哲学博士。他的早期经验是在洛斯阿拉莫斯获得的，时间是 1945 - 1946 年，即第二次世界大战结束时，他在那里管理用于制造第一颗原子弹的计算机。从那里，他直接去了贝尔实验室，在那里他花了三十年的时间从事计算、数值分析和计算管理等各个方面的研究，即 1946 - 1976 年。1976 年 7 月 23 日，他 “搬到了” 加利福尼亚州蒙特雷的海军研究生院，在那里他教学、指导研究和撰写书籍。

While at Bell Laboratories, he took time to teach in Universities, sometimes locally and sometimes on a full sabbatical leave; these activities included visiting professorships at New York University, Princeton University (Statistics), City College of New York, Stanford University, 1960-61, Stevens Institute of Technology (Mathematics), and the University of California, Irvine, 1970-71.

在贝尔实验室工作期间，他抽出时间在大学里教学，有时在当地，有时则是在整个休假期间；这些活动包括在纽约大学、普林斯顿大学（统计学）、纽约市立学院、斯坦福大学（1960 - 61 年）、史蒂文斯理工学院（数学）和加利福尼亚大学欧文分校（1970 - 71 年）担任访问教授。

Richard Hamming has received a number of awards which include: Fellow, IEEE, 1968; the ACM Turing Prize, 1968; the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award, 1979; Member, National Academy of Engineering, 1980; and the Harold Pender Award, U. Penn., 1981. In 1987 a major IEEE award was named after him, namely the Richard W. Hamming Medal, ``For exceptional contributions to information sciences and systems’'; fittingly, he was also the first recipient of this award, 1988. In 1996 in Munich he received the prestigious $130,000 Eduard Rhein Award for Achievement in Technology for his work on error correcting codes. He was both a Founder and Past President of ACM, and a Vice Pres. of the AAAS Mathematics Section.

理查德・汉明获得过许多奖项，其中包括：1968 年电气和电子工程师协会（IEEE）会员；1968 年美国计算机协会（ACM）图灵奖；1979 年 IEEE 伊曼纽尔・R・皮奥尔奖；1980 年美国国家工程院院士；1981 年宾夕法尼亚大学哈罗德・彭德奖。1987 年，一个主要的 IEEE 奖项以他的名字命名，即理查德・W・汉明奖章，“对于信息科学和系统的杰出贡献”；恰如其分的是，他也是这个奖项的第一个获得者，1988 年。1996 年在慕尼黑，他因在纠错码方面的工作获得了令人瞩目的 13 万美元的爱德华・莱茵技术成就奖。他既是美国计算机协会（ACM）的创始人，也是该协会的前任主席，还是美国科学促进会（AAAS）数学部分的副主席。

He is probably best known for his pioneering work on error-correcting codes, his work on integrating differential equations, and the spectral window which bears his name. His extensive writing has included a number of important, pioneering, and highly regarded books. These are:

他可能最著名的是他在纠错码方面的开创性工作，他在积分微分方程方面的工作，以及以他的名字命名的光谱窗。他的大量著作包括一些重要、开创性和备受推崇的书籍。这些书是：

• Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers, McGraw-Hill, 1962; Second edition 1973; Reprinted by Dover 1985; Translated into Russian.
  科学家和工程师的数值方法，McGraw-Hill，1962 年；1973 年第二版；由 Dover 1985 年重印；翻译成俄语。
• Calculus and the Computer Revolution, Houghton-Mifflin, 1968.
  微积分与计算机革命，Houghton-Mifflin，1968 年。
• Introduction to Applied Numerical Analysis, McGraw-Hill, 1971.
  应用数值分析导论，McGraw-Hill，1971 年。
• Computers and Society, McGraw-Hill, 1972.
  计算机与社会，麦格劳 - 希尔，1972 年。
• Digital Filters, Prentice-Hall, 1977; Second edition 1983; Third edition 1989; translated into several European languages.
  数字滤波器，Prentice-Hall，1977 年；1983 年第二版；1989 年第三版；被翻译成几种欧洲语言。
• Coding and Information Theory, Prentice-Hall, 1980; Second edition 1986.
  编码和信息论，Prentice-Hall，1980 年；1986 年第二版。
• Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability and Statistics, Prentice-Hall, 1985.
  应用于微积分、概率和统计的数学方法，Prentice-Hall，1985 年。
• The Art of Probability for Scientists and Engineers, Addison-Wesley, 1991.
  科学家和工程师的概率艺术，Addison-Wesley，1991 年。
• The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn, Gordon and Breach, 1997.
  《科学与工程的艺术：学会学习》，Gordon 和 Breach，1997 年。

He continued a very active life as Adjunct Professor, teaching and writing in the Mathematics and Computer Science Departments at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California for another twenty-one years before he retired to become Professor Emeritus in 1997. He was still teaching a course in the fall of 1997. He passed away unexpectedly on January 7, 1998.

他在加利福尼亚州蒙特雷的海军研究生院数学和计算机科学系担任兼职教授，继续积极地从事教学和写作，又度过了二十一年，直到 1997 年退休成为名誉教授。他在 1997 年秋季仍在教授一门课程。他于 1998 年 1 月 7 日意外去世。

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

致谢

I would like to acknowledge the professional efforts of Donna Paradise of the Word Processing Center who did the initial transcription of the talk from the tape recording. She made my job of editing much easier. The errors of sentence parsing and punctuation are mine and mine alone. Finally I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Richard Hamming and Alan Chynoweth for all of their help in bringing this transcription to its present readable state.

我想要感谢文字处理中心的唐娜・帕拉迪斯的专业努力，她从录音带中转录了这次演讲。这使我的编辑工作轻松了许多。句子分析和标点符号的错误是我的，只有我的。最后，我想向理查德・汉明和艾伦・奇诺思表示我真诚的感谢，感谢他们对使这份转录达到目前可读状态所给予的所有帮助。

J. F. Kaiser

J.F. 凯撒

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《You and Your Research》阅读笔记：在领域内取得重大成就的关键因素

原创 pf711 诗墨流年 2023 年 10 月 04 日 16:44 上海

理查德・汉明的个人演讲《You and Your Research》[1] 令人受益匪浅，现将其中的主要观点总结如下。

理查德・汉明是美国杰出数学家，在计算机和通讯领域贡献卓越。其著名的 “汉明” 问题为：你所在领域的重大问题是什么？你为何不解决它？此次演讲探讨的关键问题是：为何少数科学家能做出极其重要的贡献并被铭记，而大部分科学家却在长期内被逐渐遗忘？尽管演讲针对科学家群体，但对其他领域同样具有借鉴意义。其重要性可引用作者原话：人的生命只有一次，为何不在此过程中做一些重要之事。

以下是演讲要点的总结：

1. 运气偏爱有准备的人。伟大科学家的成功并非仅靠运气，尽管运气有一定影响，但关键在于其有准备的头脑。在成功之前，他们已对某个重大问题投入大量时间和精力。

2. 聪明并非成功的关键因素。能成为科学家的人，智商通常不会太低。

3. 年龄虽有一定影响，但并非关键。科学家越早开始研究重要问题越好，但许多音乐家、政治家和作家的最佳作品多在晚期完成。相反，过早出名存在弊端。出名后，解决小问题会变得困难；早期获得认可，功名可能会使人失去活力。

4. 工作环境条件并非关键因素。事实上，人们通常在恶劣条件下更具生产力。作者以自身为例，起初贝尔实验室未给作者分配编程人员，作者曾考虑去西海岸的航空公司工作，但最终放弃。他认为，既然自己认为计算机是重要未来，何不自己研究如何利用计算机编程？没有分配编程人员看似是问题，实则是巨大机会。然而，大多数人初次看到时，往往只关注问题而忽略机会。伟大的科学家都具备将问题转化为机会的能力。

5. 伟大的科学家在年轻时具有独立思想并有勇气去追求它们，这需要自主性、热情以及在面对困境时不放弃的决心。

6. 相信复利效应。知识和生产力如同复利，若两个能力相同的人，后者比前者每天多工作 10%，那么其产出将会是前者的两倍以上。同理，争取每天比其他人多思考一个小时，也会显著提高生产力。

7. 正确的方向至关重要。持续的努力加上超过他人的一点点勤奋，并将这些应用于解决正确问题的方向上。若选错方向，所有付出都将徒劳，只会离目标越来越远。

8. 伟大的科学家都容忍一定程度的模糊性。世界非黑即白的理论不适用于科学家。一定程度的信念能够让人开始并继续下去，而保持怀疑心态，则能让人有机会发现重大问题。因此，管理自己的一个有效方法是，当发现一个重大问题时，不让其他事分心，让潜意识保持思考。最终的结果，用作者的话说就是：“这样你就可以安心睡觉，早上醒来时免费得到答案。”

9. 拥有好的问题品味极为重要。好的问题品味意味着致力于解决重大问题，就像计算机刚出现时所带来的巨大影响一样。

10. 善于捕捉机会。每个科学家头脑中都会有 10～20 个重要问题，但当某个问题的时机成熟时，伟大的科学家能够敏锐地抓住它，并且暂时放弃其他问题的研究，专注于这一个重要问题。

11. 采用开放的工作方式。尽管关起门来工作的人生产力可能更高，但开放工作的人发现重大问题的几率会提高。应多与优秀的人交流思想。

12. 仅仅做好工作是不够的，还需要学会推销。世界很大，每个人都在忙于自己的工作，因此必须很好地展示自己的工作成果，这样才能让他人在读到时停下脚步，认真读完。伟大的科学家在销售成果时，需做到以下三点：1. 写作必须清晰明了，便于人们阅读。2. 必须学会进行正式的演讲。3. 必须学会进行非正式的演讲。

13. 如何选择从事管理还是科学研究。关键在于问题的规模。当一个问题依靠个人研究可以解决时，应选择科学研究；当问题大到一个人无法解决，而必须借助群体的力量时，则应选择走上管理的道路。

最后，将其中最关键的 3 个因素提炼出来，形成一个公式：成功 = 独立思考 + 决心 + 勤奋。

以上内容仅供参考。

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参考资料

[1] 《You and Your Research》：https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html