Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a retired Bell Labs scientist, gave a
very interesting and stimulating talk, 
You and Your Research to an overflow audience of some 200 Bellcore
staff members and visitors at the Morris Research and Engineering Center on March 7, 1986. This talk 
centered on 
Hamming's observations and research on the question ``Why do so few scientists make
significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?'' From his more than forty years of 
experience, thirty of which were at Bell Laboratories, he has made a number of direct observations, asked 
very pointed questions of scientists about what, how, and why they did things, studied the lives of great 
scientists and great contributions, and has done introspection and studied theories of creativity. The talk is 
about what he has learned in terms of the properties of the individual scientists, their abilities, traits,
working habits, attitudes, and philosophy.