As a Ph.D. Synthetic organic chemist who went on to postdoc in a top group at Harvard in the 80s, I can attest to the tone and content of these memos. Both Gas

As a Ph.D. Synthetic organic chemist who went on to postdoc in a top group at Harvard in the 80s, I can attest to the tone and content of these memos. Both Gassman and Meyers, though not giants in the field were very well respected researchers and were not famously hard ass. I'm surprised I hadn't seen these memos before but there wasn't anything there that I didn't know intuitively by my second year of grad school. The most profound advice there is that what your thesis advisor thinks of you is the most important thing you get from grad school. Like many fields, it is an old boy network and your future career is entirely dictated by recommendations. For some reason, many of my lab mates didn't get this and led horrible relationships with the boss. Even if you are a competent researcher, when your recommendation contains the phrase "he's a pain in the ass to work with", you are not going far in this line of work. I'm not saying to be a brown noser, but your ability to function well in a group environment is extremely important to employers.