 So, let us begin our discussion session on this write up or rather this is the speech of Richard Hamming titled you and your research. This speech was delivered at Bell Communication Research Colloquium on 7th March 1986 and this was addressed to the young entrance into the Bell laboratories. So, what we will do is we will go in a serial order so that everyone gets a chance that is we start with this end and then what we will do is each person let him make only one point because it will happen that if you know all the points are finished by the first few then the other people will not get time to respond. Now, when one person makes a point if others want to say something relevant to that point right they are welcome to do so. So, the person will initiate the discussion for that particular point but we will stick to just one point each person should stick to one point so let us begin from this end what we will do is you just introduce yourself you tell your name and which is your department and whether or not you are doing a PhD and then you start. Hello, I am Vinay Bhavdekar I am in the department of chemical engineering and I am a PhD student the point I would like to one point that I would like to make about hamming's speech is that he has emphasized on two things there are two points he has made he says that one thing. We will stick to one point. No, these are like related probably complementary to each other. One thing he says that no problem is not important in the sense that every problem may be important or is important and the second thing he says that you have to realize what is the limit of that importance like he makes a statement that once Shannon came up with information theory, Shannon stopped thinking of small problems and that is why Shannon could not go any further. Second point he makes is that even if all problems were considered important Bell Labs never worked on three problems one was time travel second was anti-gravity and third was teleportation. So, he said that in Bell Labs at like during his work years they were made to realize that there is a limit to you know how much importance do you attach to a particular problem. Hi, I am Kishore Malani I am tech student from electrical engineering department. Before going for my point I would like to add to his point he said that by looking at the problem you should know whether you can attack the problem do you have that like are you prepared or whether you should know whether you can attack the problem enough that you reach the problem as we discussed in the class that you take a problem and you should be able to kill that. So probably I think he meant that by considering these three problems he said that if you know that you cannot completely kill that problem and yes stressing the point of selling like you come up with a solution and then sell it to the scientific community with respect to that he mentioned that these were the problems that's why the Bell Labs did not work on these and the important point which I felt good for myself was that he said that regarding the research versus management which one one should select or like that so he said that it's your vision and your interests and your interests may change over a period of time you should allow this and the you should develop a vision and that will decide whether you should be in the technical side or on the management side but once you know that I want to work in this field either in technology or management stick with it don't try to do both the things that's what I like most. I am Rajendra Patil, I am QIP PhD student in electrical engineering department. In? Electrical engineering department, one of the characteristics of a successful scientist is having a courage so I like this most and it's right here. Hello myself Amir Diwan, I am a research scholar, I am a research scholar in department of chemical engineering regarding with respect to this article one statement or one comment they have given that regarding the strengths of individuals he has given comment on that you have to believe in yourself what you are doing and you have to stick to your principles that what you have learned and what you have to implement in between there are different stages you have to come across that whether you have to implement in terms of your professional approach whether you have to implement your knowledge or principles what you have learned with respect to your fundamental study approach with respect to your bail labs and all these things they are more or more concerned over with respect to their what we can call is their professional approach in terms of selling the product as previous people have already told that and one more thing they have mentioned regarding that ego and superego concept comes in picture when a person get at elevated height or you can say some anybody receives a prize like Nobel prize in that case the thinking ability slightly changes this is the one learning or you can say that the output of this article or that comment they are given. My name is Ram Krishnam Ghosh, I am PhD scholar in chemical engineering department in that article what he have mentioned one point he has mentioned that courage to attack that I think is a very important because when you doing doing research or something I mean you are not doing the average whatever others people are thinking you are doing something very new so you have to be enough courage that you are whatever you believe or whatever hypothesis you are doing and stick on that and doing whatever is and then and then it is possible to do something very new or do something measureable. Myself Anbu Mati, I am from chemical engineering department PhD student apart from discussing several cases about researches and how they are approaching the problem he is concluding remark also emphasizes many of the research college problem that is like favours a prepared mind so all his case studies and finally gives a path that how one should take the problem approach and prepare the mind so most of the times many of us if we get stuck and all we sort of blame other things so this gives importance to our preparation both technically and mentally. Thank you. Myself Suresh I am school of management this actually give for best hypothesis development you are a PhD school yes sir we got some idea of hypothesis development and formulations. What is the idea can you specific thing about it not idea I thought this is for in like road map of entire research just for outline for this. Okay how to do research that is what you got. Yes sir thank you sir. Hello good afternoon I am Shyamalan Rishamwala I am doing a PhD in the school of biosciences and bioengineering. N is your first name? Shyamalan. S H M L A N. S H A M L A N. Okay and biochemistry right. Biosciences. Okay. An important point in Richard Havin's talk was on how a researcher should paint a broader picture he should not when he is invited to give a talk he should not speak on the very technical topic rather he should first give a broad idea of the field so that it is available and accessible to a wider audience and once he has given that background of what he calls a wider picture it is only then after that he should go on to discuss what he has done himself. This will set the whole research which the scientist is doing or the researcher is doing in a broader framework that was very important topic which he discussed. Thank you. Also see whether you yourself feel better standing and talking because sometimes you know you can talk forcefully if you stand up but not as forcefully when you are sitting down. In a conference of course it is very very important if you are participating in a discussion or you know asking question please stand up and do it right. So as a practice let us do it here. Okay. Good evening. My name is Mukundan. School of management doing my PhD. The point which I would like to stress here is the point of ambiguity. A scholar a researcher has to know a researcher scientist has to know the position of what he is developing. He should have the capability to both support this development and also criticize his development. The stand he takes so that he knows where his research can be applied and he also knows limitation of his research helps him and the team to develop the system you know better. So this presence of ambiguity which can also be linked to the ego of the researcher because when somebody else criticizes that his cannot work his ego should be such that it should accept those limitations. Yes. So this is one point. In addition to what earlier a point given was of selling and there are three things with respect to selling of a scientist. Oneness he should be able to write clearly. Writing clearly means you look into position of a reader. When you are going to read a journal or article what makes you to stop at a particular article and read it. If you are able to apply that when you write your paper or representation naturally be able to sell your concept. Number two was you should be able to talk both in the informal context and also in a formal context. This makes the art of selling to a scientist better. Okay. Thanks. Hello. My name is Vinod. I'm a research scholar in the School of Management. The thing which I would like to tell regarding the article was he said that there is no point in really fighting with the system to a great extent. He says an example where the interpersonal skills he developed within the group helped him a lot and he says that when you really want to fight the system you cannot do a first rate work. This was important because somehow we feel that the first rate researchers are first rate people and they should be having the social conscience to fight against the evils and fight against the system when the system is going wrong. But he says that the more effort you really put into fighting the system somehow the effort which you can put into your own research activity somehow gets reduced. So he says that leave it to others if they are really fighters and if you are really a good researcher try to do it. You are part way. That's something which I like. Thank you. I'm Vasudevan from computer science department. I'm a research scholar. Actually one thing is about the age factor. When you are famous then it is very difficult to work in a symbol problem. So there is a reason if a person is famous when he is very young then after that his work is not that much important, that much famous. I'm Aruhum from school of management doing a PhD. I liked the most about the other is the researcher should know the strength and weakness and how to overtake the weakness for the betterment or we can take how to coordinate the efforts. Also hard working just not sufficient it should be more sensible. That's a particular advice which we like more. Not only hard work but intelligently directed well directed hard work. Yes. I'm K.V. Rao school of management research scholar. What I found in this article is the life of a research scholar. A researcher one who starts from its starting of the entry point to the end but out of which as a management angle what I found is if a researcher got achieved something like a noble prize immediately after that he looks at a bigger things to achieve. He leaves the what he is doing at the smaller or existing things he is not doing. So where he fault us and he could not continue his research in a better way. And second thing what he found is if a person is capable of doing the bigger things to be done with the team then only he should take the management or leading the organization to do the activity as a researcher. Else we should not go for a management. That's what I found. Good evening to all. I'm Abdul Azad doing PhD from school of management. First let me thank Prasad Kamakal wholeheartedly because he introduced such a wonderful article. And really while reading while going through this particular article most of our doubts most of our points which we were searching through textbooks and through such lectures we got them in a very lucid manner. So of course to highlight there are many points which my all friends you know putting here. But what I like most is an inherent quality which should be there with research scholar is attaching himself or herself emotionally to the work to the problem. So emotional commitment to the problem which is at the hand for undertaking research is most important because the moment when we are emotionally attached to the problem naturally we work day and day and day continuously without paying attention on any smaller details. The moment when we are emotionally committed then what happens that continuous work later on will assign to our subconscious mind. Suppose if we are facing some problem we are unable to get an answer but still we are working hard because we are emotionally committed we want some results out of that we want some queries to be resolved. So that time we are doing a lot of work and in the process we sleep then our subconscious mind come into the room. Then what happens subconscious mind takes that assignment as a reworking problem then it starts reworking and eventually at the end that subconscious mind will give the answer. And this is true because suppose if we don't attach ourselves emotionally to a particular problem then what happens subconscious mind move around. It moves here and there and look at the things which are not that useful which are not related to the problem. So sometime we see so many useless things in our dreams. Instead of getting or exploiting the power of subconscious mind we simply leave that subconscious mind to move around. And the beauty the way he has presented the concept of emotional commitment and using the power of subconscious mind is what I liked most. And to one of the points which Mr. Mukundan highlighted regarding ambiguity so there the author you know the speaker he provided or rather he gave an idea to be a balance to take a balance approach because ambiguity basically it is something related to total belief or total doubt. So total belief and total doubt is not advisable we should take a balanced path so that we can solve the problem. So these are the things which I like. Thank you. I am Varsha Surakur finally a BTEC student from SNDT University. What I liked was he says our mind should be always prepared to tackle any problem and we should work hard on our research so that our research would be successful and would be a good kind of research. So SNDT means which discipline are you? Computer science. Hello everybody I am Ms. Swati Mohite. I have done my masters in pure electronics. I am a lecturer in St. Francis Engineering College Mumbai University. Most of the points are covered by till now so I would just like to add a few to what Ms. Ambu said. She said correctly that luck favours those who are prepared well. To illustrate this Dr. Richard Hemming has given two examples. One example is very well known of Newton and second one is of Shannon. When Newton's many of his researchers are including some or the other story behind it. Like when it was about gravitational force it was like he saw an apple falling on the ground and then from that probably he did a hypothesis and later on it was proved. But even though this is one of the fact that he could give this hypothesis because of this incidence but we have to emphasize on this also that he persuaded that particular problem he tried to go into the roots of those problems and then only he could have his name established as a scientist. Hello myself Vinay Amte. I am a Ph.D. research scholar in the Department of Chemical Engineering. So starting from the very first day until now I am quite flummoxed whether all this research that is discoveries or invention are the outcome of some sort of serendipity. Yes I did one example that Newton's saw that apple falling from the tree and it was just accidental fortune I think so. If that apple was not fallen then I don't think that gravitational force has been discovered. Likewise the word catalysis it was also one type of a serendipity word. Bersilius was performing certain excrement and suddenly that thermometer was broken in that beaker and that whatever the mercury which was dissolved in the reaction mixture and that from that word the catalysis originated. So whether it is the part of necessity or it is one type of a serendipity which leads to the discoveries or invention. So still this is not cleared. So is it serendipity or? Necessity. We call it as an invention or discoveries or mother of some type of invention. I will tell you an interesting quote and then she can respond. The interesting quote is someone examined this hypothesis. Necessity is the mother of invention and he said necessity is not the mother of invention. Knowledge and experiment are experiments. So there is this point of view that knowledge and experiment that is what leads to invention not necessity. You want to say something? I beg to differ with Mr. Vinay. As he said that if the apple might not have fallen down or he might not have seen that that this particular research of gravitational force or invention of gravitational force would never have been come out. But just try and think how many of us have seen apples or anything falling down from whatever height. Have we ever thought of that in the first place? No, certainly not. It needs a vision for a researcher to prove himself and I think that is what was there in Newton. Right. So the gravitation is we can say discovery not an invention because discovery, discovery. Certain level of commitment is required for any type of research or some invention or discoveries. So Newton was having more commitment so obviously he has discovered that thing. So Richard Fleming also has mentioned the same thing that we should have certain commitment or full commitment to our research work. Then only we can succeed in our destination. Now he has mentioned some few factors that luck, courage, age, willpower then ideal working environment are essential for any type of a discovery, invention or research work. So moreover one colleague has also mentioned that most of the creativity is originated from the subconscious state of mind. It is also, in fact it is also true that if we hammer our brain some output generally will be there. So we should get totally involved in our research. That commitment is most required. That is my analysis for that. Now someone wants to respond. We will let them respond and then you can continue. Now I also want to tell you an advantage of standing up. In many situations when several people want to speak at the same time the one who stands up gets the residence. Automatically. So it will help you. You will get a chance as compared to others who do not stand up. A famous statement of Newton himself is standing on the shoulders of giant. Standing on the shoulders of giant. So primarily most of the inventions or discoveries that can be invention or discovery it has been based on serendipity only. And second thing is evolution of science has always been cumulative in nature. It is primarily cumulative in nature. When you look at a product or any other applications it could be disruptive. Whereas science development has always been cumulative. Which means there is an incremental change happening. When you say incremental change the serendipity focus of it is little more. Being serendipity does not reduce the necessity for us to have the qualities what this talk gave us. These qualities identified in this talk only helps us to apply the serendipity and then convert it into a proper output. Okay. Hello. Myself Muni Sharma. I am M.Tech final year student in the department of chemical engineering. First of all I would like to thank Professor Shipat Kamalkar for giving us this good article for reading. And I am really thankful to you sir. And regarding to this article by Professor Heming. He has made a lot of points regarding what are the essential qualities of a good researcher. But I have noted two three points. First point I would like to discuss is the commitment. Regarding commitment he says that like if you want to do good kind of first class work. Then you need to do you must have a good commitment that 100% commitment. So even if you have average skills you don't have good skills. Still you can succeed in your work. And second thing he says that never fight with the system. Because that in that case you will unnecessarily waste your energies and you will not be able to focus on your work. So by so for that he has given one example like in one of his colleague. He was taking care of all his mails and posts and he was not allowing his secretary to take care of those mails. So later on Heming asked the secretary what was the reason. So she told that he himself is not allowing me to go through all his mails and so how can I if he is not ready. So by this Heming was trying to make a point that if you do like this kind of work. Then the research which you are doing you will not be able to devote time. So channelize your energy think about those. And third point he makes that like he makes a point about dress like he was initially wearing some absurd kind of dress. So by wearing those that kind of dress he was not getting self-respect from the people around him. So later on he changed that for that kind of dress. So he he got what he that respect. So by this he meant that sometimes we need to change according to our surroundings. We should not be adamant or we should not be we should not be flexible. We should be flexible to mold ourselves. That is a very good quality of a researcher. And commitment part I like the most like you have to give it 100% for first class work. By first class work he meant that that should be like two criteria he has specified one like sometimes you may you may or you may not get noble price. And secondly the work should be like this so that the other coming generations could follow that work. They they can start from there from your work from where you have finished. Thank you. Good evening everybody. My name is Vijay Hanuman the home class car. I'm doing PhD in department of energy science and engineering. Almost all finds have covered but I would like to emphasize on one point which Heming has. Here I just want to mention. So when we introduce yourself it may not be necessary to tell the complete name. The point is you are telling your name so that others can relate to you. So sometimes when we tell a long name then people may forget right later on. It helps people to remember if you tell just you know that name by which you would like to be called. Yeah. And it is he talks about the great scientist that they don't read too much of theories. They read only that part of theory which is just required to go ahead or they simply don't believe in all the theories. They believe in only that part of theory which is just required to go ahead in that field. And then they identify the limitations or the errors in that field or that theory and then they propose new theories to replace that existing theory. So I like this point very much that is. So anyone wants to make any other points which have been left out? Yes. One point which he said about himself is that he always surrounded himself with better people which are more intellectually better or who are very good in their own fields. So he never used to sit with mathematicians during his lunch break. He used to go to physicists and once he found that quite a few physicists, good physicists have left or there is nothing much important to discuss then he shifted to chemistry guys. And then so he always like challenged his intellectual mind and kept himself surrounded by better people so that he can think in a broader sense. Yes. Very good. And I have one question. One point was not clear is that I did not understand properly about the doors open and doors closed point of view. Could you please? So anyone wants to comment on that doors open and doors closed? Yeah. So basically doors open is doors closed is not the room or anything. You are open to all. Your knowledge should be shared. It should not be kept inside. If you are brilliant, intelligent, but you have done something until and unless you share with others you never get a fame name anything until you share it then knowledge will grow and you learn much better than with others. So you can get sharing you can learn as well as you give and take. You have to be always open to the outside. That is people should able to come free and talk to you. It is a relationship, knowledge and whatever you do. So that door should be always open. It should not be closed. So it's a metaphorical sentence. Yeah. Basically. But one point which I took it is that the people who sit with doors closed is they are able to concentrate fully on their work and they come up with a better result. That is true. You mentioned you closed people they work very hard until you share it the work what you have done inside for 30 years. It is not useful to the society and not useful to the that is the improvement of the knowledge or the scientific things. So what is the use of working 30 years when you close the door? Your purpose of thing has gone. Also in a later when I would say nowadays one can have the doors closed but interact on email. No, I mean it can it does happen. Right. And it can happen it should not happen but it can happen that you know somehow your physical neighbor is not necessarily the person with whom. Right. You are able to get along. It should not happen but I am just saying. So in which case you may not keep your door open in that sense but I think here it is a much wider sense that is being talked about. But it does make a difference. Yes. If if you see as faculty member you are not a faculty member definitely you feel more comfortable. You know interact with the person who keeps the doors open. There is no doubt about it. No doubt. Even among the households whichever house keeps the door open. Right. I mean people feel somehow that doors and windows open. Even people interested to share their ideas one who keeps open. Yes. If you are close nobody will come and speak to you also. But of course his point was also that some people may not interact but yet they may do a lot of good work. That was your point. Yes. You can some exceptions may be there but I think what is being talked about is by and large. That is the thing. By and large without any kind of interaction it may be very exceptional. Right. People may be doing good work. In his concluding remarks he says it is a poor workman who blames his tools. So that is one very important statement. I mean the point is you have given a situation and you have to work through it and you have to figure out how to work through it. Yes. A good workman will work with a given small set of tools. Yes. And still come up with something very path breaking. Yes. In fact he has made a statement that if the working conditions are little bit difficult then you are likely to do good work. Rather than situation when everything is available to you. Right. That is the kind of statement he has made. One more very important. Let us give him a chance. Sir. If the situation is bad then only we can identify the problem and we can attack that. He mentioned at quite a few places that if we turn around the situation or a problem or if we look at it from a different angle then we can do much better work than what was earlier. Yes. At this point we have stressed in two different contexts. One is that creativity is ability to look at the same thing as everyone else but think something different. Then we have also said that education is not about learning diverse subjects but diverse ways to the same subject. Okay. Third we have emphasized in problem solving that reformulation of the statement of the problem is a very powerful method of solving the problem. So that is the point that has been brought out by him also that turning the situation around statement around how you can do that. Almost related to that what he says if you are not able to get the solution do not worry either you change the goal post or the way you did. But you prefer the way you did so you could succeed. Yes. Instead of giving right. Okay. Yeah there was someone else. What he mentions was that one shouldn't assert one's ego. He talks about how somebody would dress in office and he would not be taken seriously by the other people around them. And he felt he was doing what he wanted to do but then he didn't get along well with others. It's only when one changes one attitude so that you are more acceptable with the people around you but you are taken seriously. That's a very important thing to consider for scientists at least. On the point of view I would like to add a few things. Basically when a person is not looking at the truth all the scientists great researchers they always the target is the truth. The moment when a person is reaching truth or found truth their false ego naturally go down almost they never come with that kind of ego. So that false ego dies and what comes out is the ego of reality the ego of truth. And he suggests that this kind of ego which is based on truth should be retained. The moment when we retain that means the person the researcher will have that conviction that courage to stand for truth all the time. Therefore the moment one gets ego based on truth should be retained. So that is what one point I would like to add. And another thing is a very interesting correlation given that is knowledge and productivity is like compound interest. So this point they had for example if two persons are working and if one person with little effort say if he works 10% extra then definitely the person may surpass the other. In long run he will surpass by a large amount because it is an iterative process. So that concept is floated. So there are small differences in the beginning end up shown as you know by the time 20-30 years. Yeah it is one way big jump and for that you know the drive initiative is important. I would like to make one more point here. Just let us give some. Sir one of the most philosophy question why should one do world-class research? He says success and fame are sort of dividends. In his opinion what he says is that one should not work for the output the result. One should actually do it for the sake of the kind of struggle that one has put. He says the value is the struggle more than that is the result. So the kind of path that you take the struggle the effort that you put that is great that gives you great joy rather than the outcome of it. So this is what I feel is most important. Sir he also makes one important point that as a researcher you should be well enough like sensible so that you can just the fallacies in the system. Like for that he gave one quote that when library was shifted to some far place one of his friend asked for bicycle but he could not get due to some red tapism. So in that case his friend says that thing like this was a problem in the system so immediately he was not pursuing that bicycle. And he concentrated his energy on more on his research. So he rose to the president of Bell Labs. So as a researcher this quality must be there like you must be sensible enough to judge the surrounding. Regarding the fact that research is not only in the outcome but the manner in which you approach problems or struggles. This point of view is very important. For instance you know look at this quotation research is not only finding out something you do not know. It is also finding that you do not know something it is not only finding something you do not know but finding that you do not know something. That is also in a large part of the education because many times students feel they start with a lot of preconceived notions in the beginning. And first one one and half years they find that they do not seem to know so many things. Now that itself is a part of the process research process. This self doubt and some sort of kind of experiences which go against their initial assumptions. They feel something is wrong with them maybe they are not made for research this kind of things also can arise. And they might have thought that you know they are very intelligent they had got high marks but one one and half years and they do not seem to get anywhere. How can it be? When will that stage come when I will also see myself writing paper like somebody else is doing or is it that I am not capable of doing it. So this period of self doubt and so on in the initial phase or finding that you do not know something is there but that is an important part of research. Because after that only the other phase comes. Sir another point what we discussed about is the approach great scientists should have towards their work. There should be a sense of aggressiveness in the approach. Here is an example of how they were fortunate enough to be aggressive and first to work on great problems and become great scientists. The situation of the country and the world the second world war and then the development of law laboratory for nuclear bomb development. Even though here also giving some examples of even though they were in the data to develop the fission energy fission bomb. They waited for it to be developed by the competitors and then they came out with the atomic bomb. So the thing is that there should be assertiveness aggressiveness in the scientists to approach a problem. To have this properly the situation in the country should support it. So it can be a negative approach the sense that if the country or the world situation is peaceful there will be much of aggressiveness towards great research. So this is one of the negative view towards having a greater scientist. There is same thing as saying there should be some challenge in the environment. If everything is available then you do not feel. At one or two points he has in a certain way he has stressed the importance of discipline. Like initially before coming to Bell Labs he was at another place where he found himself to be not doing a very important task. So there began his journey of knowing what is the difference between average scientist and a high class working scientist. And while he was working with Dr. Taki he compared himself and then he went to his department head Dr. Bode. And then he realized the importance of hard work. So then he has given his own example that every Friday afternoon he used to sit and think only upon the larger problems in his field. So over a period of many years that helped him to do better work. And also he said on a lighter sense that he used to sometimes neglect his wife and give more time towards his work. So that helped him to do better work. So over a period of long time with discipline we can achieve more results. Also all of us should note that if you want to do good research in our own areas we should be aware of ten important problems in our area of interest. It is something that we can make note of. So we should be aware of ten important problems in our area on which one can work on or people are working. Anything else? It reminds me a quotation of a great Sufi scientist. He says we must know enough to know that we do not know. Yes. Really knowing the people who know less normally pose much. Therefore the art of a scientist is basically to search for more and more knowledge. And another thing what I learnt out of this is you know I was just trying to get myself inspired out of that. It is like blessed are those who are sincere in seeking truth. Blessed are those who are sincere in seeking truth. Such are the people with rational minds who eventually. So we will have a short break for five minutes so that I can just collect those points which have not been covered from this article. And then we will have a concluding session.