Richard Wesley Hamming
A two-dimensional visualisation of the Hamming distance
Born	February 11, 1915(1915-02-11) Chicago, Illinois
Died	January 7, 1998(1998-01-07) (aged 82) Monterey, California
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of Louisville Manhattan Project Bell Telephone Laboratories Naval Postgraduate School
Alma mater	University of Chicago University of Nebraska University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Doctoral advisor	Waldemar Trjitzinsky
Known for	Hamming code Hamming window Hamming numbers Sphere-packing Hamming distance Association for Computing Machinery
Influenced	David J. Farber
Notable awards	Turing Award (1968)

Richard Wesley Hamming (Chicago, February 11, 1915 – Monterey, California, January 7, 1998) was an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer science and telecommunications. His contributions include the Hamming code (which makes use of a Hamming matrix), the Hamming window (described in Section 5.8 of his book Digital Filters), Hamming numbers, Sphere-packing (or hamming bound) and the Hamming distance.

He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1937, a master's degree from the University of Nebraska in 1939, and finally a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1942. He was a professor at the University of Louisville during World War II, and left to work on the Manhattan Project in 1945, programming one of the earliest electronic digital computers to calculate the solution to equations provided by the project's physicists. The objective of the program was to discover if the detonation of an atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere. The result of the computation was that this would not occur, and so the United States used the bomb, first in a test in New Mexico, and then twice against Japan. Later, from 1946 to 1976, he worked at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he collaborated with Claude E. Shannon. During this period, he was an Adjunct Professor at the City College of New York, School of Engineering. On July 23, 1976 he moved to the Naval Postgraduate School, where he worked as an Adjunct Professor until 1997, when he became Professor Emeritus. He died a year later in 1998.

He was a founder and president of the Association for Computing Machinery. His philosophy on scientific computing appears as preface to his 1962 book on numerical methods: The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

Awards and professional recognition

• Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery, 1968.
• Fellow of the IEEE, 1968.
• IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award, 1979.
• Member of the National Academy of Engineering, 1980.
• Harold Pender Award, University of Pennsylvania, 1981.
• IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, 1988.
• Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, 1994.
• Basic Research Award, Eduard Rhein Foundation, 1996.
• Certificate of Merit, Franklin Institute, 1996

The IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, named after him, is an award given annually by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), for "exceptional contributions to information sciences, systems and technology", and he was the first recipient of this medal.

Books

• Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers, McGraw-Hill, 1962; second edition 1973. Dover paperback reprint: Hamming, Richard W; Hamming, Richard Wesley (1986). Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers. ISBN 0486652416. http://books.google.com/?id=Y3YSCmWBVwoC&printsec=frontcover. .
• Calculus and the Computer Revolution, Houghton-Mifflin, 1968.
• Introduction To Applied Numerical Analysis, McGraw-Hill, 1971.
• Computers and Society, McGraw-Hill, 1972.
• Digital Filters, Prentice Hall, 1977; second edition 1983; third edition 1989; Paperback reprint: Hamming, Richard Wesley (1998). Digital Filters (3rd ed.). Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 048665088X. http://books.google.com/?id=GQv9UOdeW9cC&printsec=frontcover. 
• Coding and Information Theory, Prentice Hall 1980; second edition 1986.
• Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics, Prentice Hall, 1985. Paperback reprint: Hamming, Richard Wesley (2004). Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics. Dover Publications. ISBN 0486439453. http://books.google.com/?id=jMc8PgAACAAJ&printsec=frontcover. 

  Unconventional introductory textbook which attempts to both teach calculus and give some idea of what it is good for at the same time. Might be of special interest to someone teaching an introductory calculus course using a conventional textbook, in order to pick up some new pedagogical viewpoints.

• The Art of Probability for Scientists and Engineers, Addison-Wesley, 1991; Paperback reprint: Hamming, Richard Wesley (1994). The Art of Probability for Scientists and Engineers. Westview Press. ISBN 0201406861. http://books.google.com/?id=jX_F-77TA3gC&printsec=frontcover. 
• Hamming, Richard W; Hamming, Richard Wesley (1997). The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn. Gordon and Breach. ISBN 9056995014. http://books.google.com/?id=y0yOQgAACAAJ. 

  Entertaining and instructive. Hamming tries to extract general lessons—both personal and technical – to aid one in having a successful technical career by telling stories from his own experiences.

  (Some of this material relating to the self-management of one's technical career can be found online in You and Your Research, (Hamming 1986).)

  One of Hamming's lessons is never trust without question someone who claims to be giving you highly accurate data to analyze – not because they're deliberately lying to you but because the data is never as accurate as people think.

Appearances

• Hamming discusses the use and potential of computers in the 1965 film Logic By Machine.

Quotes

• The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. Dedication to his book: RW Hamming (1971). Introduction to Applied Numerical Analysis. McGraw Hill. 

  In this book Hamming taught that tailoring a numerical method to fit a physical problem, rather than blindly using a generic 'all-purpose' routine, could provide insight into the problem by underlining its peculiarities. Later in the book, he restates the dedication as * The purpose of computing numbers is not yet in sight.

• Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane. N Rose (1988). Mathematical Maxims and Minims. Rome Press. 
• There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think. ( Recalled by Alan G. Chynoweth in his introduction of RW Hamming before his talk You and your research, which may be a misquote from Hamming's famous paper "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics".)
• Whereas Newton could say, "If I have seen a little farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants," I am forced to say, "Today we stand on each other's feet." Perhaps the central problem we face in all of computer science is how we are to get to the situation where we build on top of the work of others rather than redoing so much of it in a trivially different way. (1968 Turing Award lecture)
• What are the most important problems in your field? Are you working on one of them? Why not? (Generalization from You and Your Research)^{[not in citation given]}
• The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created. (You and Your Research)^{[clarification needed]}
• It is better to solve the right problem the wrong way than to solve the wrong problem the right way. (Attributed without citation by Samuel P Morgan in his biography of RW Hamming.)
• In research, if you know what you are doing, then you shouldn't be doing it. from his book: Numerical methods for scientists and engineers, p. 395.
• Beware of finding what you're looking for. [1]
• Machines should work. People should think. Also attributed to Thomas J Watson, occasionally in the form "Machines might give us more time to think but will never do our thinking for us."
• You cannot have a science without measurement. Probably not original with Hamming; the same statement was made by William Fielding Ogburn, sociologist, for example, and by Galileo Galilei.

• Hamming, Richard (1965). "Logic By Machine". http://www.archive.org/details/logic_by_machine_1 
• Hamming, Richard (1980). "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics". The American Mathematical Monthly 87 (2): 81. doi:10.2307/2321982. JSTOR 2321982. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Hamming.html 
• Hamming, Richard (1986). "You and Your Research". http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html