Sunday, April 12, 2009

About doing science and research

When mortally pressed for time one compromises with quoting other people than taking time out to coherently report one's own mind. And hence here I plan to put up links to a some exciting writings about doing science and research about which I could myself go on for pages albeit it comes from only 4 years of experience.

{I shall be biased towards Maths, Physics and Theoretical Computer Science since these are the 3 fields with which I have some acquaintance. Its been a long time I have been committed to Physics and flirting with the other two. Again among the other 2, I have been courting Maths for the longest time and have only been looking at from far away at TCS. Eventually I don't plan to meet the day when I shall need to choose! :P}

Hence the job is best left in the hands of the giants like Dyson, Hamming and Atiyah etc:

1. "Advice to Young Mathematicians" by Atiyah

2. "Heretical thoughts about science and society" by Dyson

3. "Birds and Frogs" by Dyson

4. "You and Your Research" by Richard Hamming

5. "Kill the messenger" by Sunil Mukhi


And yes before I sign off I will tell you to watch the movie "October Sky". It really captures the idea of doing research .

The passionate insanity of doing science and research and that addictive feeling of being involved with an idea forgetting everything else.

1 comment:

Successful Researcher: How to Become One said...

More related advice is available on my blog, e.g. here and here.