There’s an editorial in PLoS Computational Biology presenting condensed thoughts on “first-class research” of mathematician Richard Hamming. It is based on a transcript of a brilliant talk given by Hamming in 1986 at the Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar. Definitely a must-read.

clipped from compbiol.plosjournals.org Hamming’s 1986 talk was remarkable. In “You and Your Research,” he addressed the question: How can scientists do great research, i.e., Nobel-Prize-type work? His insights were based on more than forty years of research as a pioneer of computer science and telecommunications who had the privilege of interacting with such luminaries as the physicists Richard Feynman, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Robert Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, and Walter Brattain, with Claude Shannon, “the father of information theory,” and with the statistician John Tukey.