Foreword

By Herschel Loomis, Ph.D.

Historic city street with horse-drawn carriages

Chicago, circa 1910

Remembering Richard Hamming

This biography of Richard Wesley Hamming was developed by his former doctoral student, Martin Mandelberg, who contacted me in June 2017 after he started his Hamming Legacy Project. Dick and his wife, Wanda, were excellent friends with my wife, Shirley, and me between 1981 and 1998, when he and I were professors at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California. I was pleased to be asked to write this foreword and contribute my fond recollections.

Richard Hamming’s work first impacted me as a faculty member at the University of California, Davis, teaching a first-year introductory electrical engineering course. I used his seminal 1950 BSTJ paper on error-correcting codes [1] as an example of a critical discovery readable and understandable by bright young engineers without requiring much technical background.

Fast-forward to 1981, when I was a visiting professor at the NPS and discovered that I was now a colleague of this legendary man who practiced and preached an open-door policy; he believed those who worked behind closed office doors often accomplished more but were not usually working on important ideas because they were not talking to their colleagues. He would drop in for a brief chat if you had your door open. In this way, we became good friends on a first-name basis.

One day, Dick was making rounds of his open-door colleagues, bothered by a question. I don’t remember what it was. He usually had well-formulated thoughts, and the discussions helped him refine these thoughts. This time, however, I contributed some different thoughts and ideas. Dick jumped up, saying something like, “That is a better way of looking at it,” and continued his rounds, mulling over the fresh insight that I was proud to be able to help him develop.

We had lunch together regularly, and when we did, food was not the purpose—it was to have spirited discussions. Dick occasionally included another faculty member or graduate student, and topics were wide-ranging, since Dick wanted to hear about other people’s big ideas and share his own.

We often would get together for social events; Dick and Wanda were excellent hosts. Wanda promoted social interaction at their frequent dinner parties because she wanted to keep Dick ‘human.’ Wanda and Dick were fond of bawdy limericks, of which they had a vast repertoire and enjoyed reciting at their dinner parties.

Dick read various topics, including mathematics, engineering, computer science, history, and philosophy. He was typically confident in his knowledge of many subjects, and he would share the same on many occasions when he talked. Dick was also a good listener and would provide others with wisdom and insight when he thought they would receive it well. He wrote all his papers, lectures, and books on a typewriter until he finally agreed to use a personal computer.

Martin Mandelberg has done an admirable job writing this critical biography. I knew Dick personally for 17 years; this book provides more details of his life than I remembered. The book includes stories of his early life, the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, 30 years at AT&T Bell Labs, and his research, teaching, and mentoring after arriving at NPS in 1976.

The research reported in this book is extensive, the organization is effective, and the narrative is enjoyable to read. Very few researchers or professors have such a complete biography, which is a fitting tribute to this distinguished scholar.

—Herschel Loomis, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor Emeritus, NPS, Monterey, California