S. Weinberg: Scientist: Four golden lessons
R.P. Feynman: A Letter to a Former Student
(more advice from R.P.F. can be found in the book Feynman’s Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow)
J.D. Watson: Succeeding in Science: Some Rules of Thumb
(see also his book Avoid Boring People)
A. Ciechanover: Nuggets of Career Advice
The above materials make for an interesting comparison with the advice from the Fields medal winner Terence Tao.
Giving advice seems like our lecturing: we teach to learn a particular subject ourselves. The knowledge we pass to students not interested in research should be custom-fitted to no more than 9 people in a classroom. A comment about math olympiads: it has come to my attention that grading practices discourage partial solutions. This is fine for the production of people like Perelman, who seems satisfied with one big result. However, if a proof is considered as a pseudo-object, then by the anthropic principle it is impossible to produce a sequence of them to satisfy higher needs.
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