“If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work. It’s perfectly obvious. Great scientists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them. Let me warn you, important problems must be phrased carefully – It’s not the consequence that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack. That is what makes a problem important. When I say that most scientists don’t work on important problems, I mean it in that sense. The average scientist, so far as I can make out, spends almost all his [or her] time working on problems which he [or she] believes will not be important and he [or she] also doesn’t believe that they will lead to important problems.” – Richard Hamming (1986) “You and Your Research”, Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar, 7 March