Cover of The Art of Doing Science and Engineering

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering

Richard Hamming

Taste, problem selection, and the compounding edge of working on what matters.

Hamming’s lectures are about the meta-skill beneath all technical work: how to choose problems worth your life, how to keep your edge compounding, and why the people who do important work are usually the ones who deliberately decided to. It belongs next to the scientist and operator biographies — the same lesson, stated as method.