Quotes by Richard Hamming

About Richard Hamming:

Richard Wesley Hamming was an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer science and telecommunications. His contributions include the Hamming code (which makes use of a Hamming matrix), the Hamming window, Hamming numbers, sphere-packing (or Hamming bound) and the Hamming distance.
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What you learn from others you can use to follow. What you learn for yourself you can use to lead.

Richard Hamming

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

Richard Hamming

True greatness is when your name is like , , and —when it's spelled with a lower case letter.

Richard Hamming

Does anyone believe that the difference between the and integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.

Richard Hamming

When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did 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 ...

Richard Hamming

The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers.

Richard Hamming

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!

Richard Hamming

Beware of finding what you're looking for. [ .]

Richard Hamming

If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what 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 slig...

Richard Hamming

Good scientists will fight the system rather than learn to work with the system.

Richard Hamming

If you read all the time what other people have done, you will the think the way they thought.

Richard Hamming

If you don't work on important problems, it's not likely that you'll do important work.

Richard Hamming

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 ten years later somehow, you don't quite know what problems are worth working on.

Richard Hamming

The emotion at the point of technical breakthrough is better than wine, women and song put together.

Richard Hamming

Author Bio

  • NameRichard Hamming
  • DescriptionAmerican mathematician and information theorist
  • AliasesRichard Wesley Hamming; Richard W. Hamming
  • BornFebruary 11, 1915
  • DiedJanuary 7, 1998
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionMathematician; Computer Scientist; Engineer
  • AwardsTuring Award; Harold Pender Award