How to do research Series (1/100)

Four golden lessons

by Prof. Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics (from Nature article)

Rule #1:

"I managed to get a quick PhD — though when I got it I knew almost nothing about physics. But I did learn one big thing: that no one knows everything, and you don't have to."


Rule #2:

"When I was teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1960s, a student told me that he wanted to go into general relativity rather than the area I was working on, elementary particle physics, because the principles of the former were well known, while the latter seemed like a mess to him. It struck me that he had just given a perfectly good reason for doing the opposite."

"My advice is to go for the messes — that's where the action is."

Rule #3:

It is to forgive yourself for wasting time. As you will never be sure which are the right problems to work on, most of the time that you spend in the laboratory or at your desk will be wasted. If you want to be creative, then you will have to get used to spending most of your time not being creative, to being becalmed on the ocean of scientific knowledge.

Rule #4:

Finally, learn something about the history of science, or at a minimum the history of your own branch of science. You can get great satisfaction by recognizing that your work in science is a part of history.

Reference:

These are extracted from: S. Wienberg, Scientist: Four golden lessons, Nature 426, 389 (27 November 2003) | doi:10.1038/426389a