

A great physicist, and how he worked - herdrick
http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/Nemesis%20Chapters/Nemesis3.htm

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ananthrk
Beautiful essay. Thanks for posting.

An obligatory favorite passage:

 _"You'll never learn experimental physics by sitting at a desk," he abruptly
said. "Get over to Building 46, where the real physics is being done!"

I was embarrassed. "But I don't understand anything yet. I don't know how to
help. I'd just be in the way," I protested.

I remember his answer very clearly "That doesn't matter," he said. "just go
over there and hang around. Do anything anybody asks you to do. Sooner or
later someone will see that you're there, and they'll ask you to hold a
screwdriver. Get your hands dirty Pretty soon you'll know how things are
constructed. Once they have seen that you're around a lot, they may ask you to
help test the apparatus. Before long you'll know how everything works. You can
read memos anytime, in the evenings, at home, but you can only learn
experimental physics by being in the laboratory, by doing it."_

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RiderOfGiraffes
This rang loudly and clearly for me ...

    
    
      Skepticism, the ability not to be fooled, was clearly
      important, but it is also cheap. It is easy to disbelieve
      everything, and some scientists seemed to take this
      approach. Sometimes Luie was skeptical, but more often
      he seemed to embrace crazy ideas, at least at first. He
      rarely dismissed anything out of hand, no matter how
      absurd, until he had examined it closely. But then one
      tiny flaw, solidly established, was enough to kill it.
      His openness to wild ideas was balanced by his firmness
      in dismissing those that were flawed. He had a finely
      honed skepticism. Perhaps that was part of his secret
      talent.
    

Far, far too often I've seen people dismiss ideas because of a single, obvious
flaw, when the idea is salvageable with a small modification. Staying open to
crazy ideas to find the nugget of truth or value is an incredibly useful
skill. Skeptics need to hear that message. Disbelieving everything is easy.

Related:

<http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=you+and+your+research>

<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html>

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jacobolus
Thanks for this.

I've been trying to come up with a good frame for an upcoming talk (about an
open source programming project), and I think that putting it in terms of the
scientific method is just the thing. That is, in making code, just like in
making science or in any other kind of "hacking", it's essential to first and
continually "get your hands on the machinery", figure out by fiddling how
things work, stop worrying about breaking things, and just see what happens
when you push something here or there (of course, that doesn't mean we should
throw caution to the wind, but just that we should take some risks), and then
after that, after the parts are understood, take a step back and build a
little bit, and then dive back in.

One important part (to writing code, and therefore a subject for my talk) is
figuring out how to layer abstractions one on the other, so that we can avoid
duplication of effort, and can separate out logic into clearly understood
parts, small enough to be effectively tinkered on, and independent enough so
that each one doesn't break the others. But we can't let worrying about the
purity of those abstractions, and analyzing them, ultimately get in the way of
actually diving in to fiddle, and figuring out what smells, first hand.

"You don't always understand what you are doing; if you do, it probably means
that you aren't really near the forefront of knowledge."

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prakash
Thanks for posting this, wonderful article. I have been a big fan of Muller
since I heard his Physics for Future President's podcasts -- great stuff.

\- <http://www.amazon.com/dp/142662459X> \-
<http://www.physicsforfuturepresidents.com/>

Did anyone check his homepage, he's got a fantastic sense of humor.

<http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/welcome.html>

 _Rich's graduate students Tim Culler and Alex Kim have been hard at work
setting up their home pages, instead of working on their thesis research.
Rich's other graduate student Matthew Kim has no home page, and will
undoubtedly graduate first._

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Sthorpe
I love this comment, "Farmers to stay in close touch with the land, the source
of their sustenance, and not to relegate all the manual work to hired
laborers."

Every great company had been started from several small innovations. I knew
youtube or any site that was playing video with flash was going to be big. Its
because we had just developed the flash player to do it.

I learned then that playing with any new idea/software gave me much more than
some curiosity.

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chewbranca
Always fun to hear about great hackers in other fields. I loved reading about
the anecdotes of Richard Feynman in his books, and this article struct a
similar chord with me.

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Confusion
I love this, rather uncommon, stance:

 _He had learned just enough about every subject; he could go back and fill in
the gaps later, when and if that was necessary. The gaps in his knowledge were
surprisingly large, but not detrimental to his work._

In some ways, teaching and learning specific subjects very deeply may be a
form of premature optimization.

