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My dad is a math professor at a big state school with a strong engineering program. I was hanging out with him and some of his college classmates, many of whom
by smalter 14y ago
My dad is a math professor at a big state school with a strong engineering program. I was hanging out with him and some of his college classmates, many of whom are also math/science/engineering professors. One of them told me, "If everyone worked as hard as your dad, anyone could be a math professor."
That stuck with me, not as a statement of fact, but a testament to the power of hard work to shape outcomes, even in a field considered to be dominated by genius.
- mej10 14y agoReminds me of this anecdote from Richard Hamming's "You and Your Research": 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!