The original content of Feynman’s letter looks like below, and I would like to share a bit of my experience.
A former student, who was also once a student of Tomonaga’s, wrote to extend his congratulations. Feynman responded, asking Mr. Mano what he was now doing. The response: “studying the Coherence theory with some applications to the propagation of electromagnetic waves through turbulent atmosphere… a humble and down-to-earth type of problem.”
Apparently, everyone has a period of confusion, in path obtaining PhD, in path becoming a better person, and in path of exploration. What people can do daily is limited and the earth won’t change become of individual’s behavior. Even a humble and down-to-earth type of problem has some points to appreciate.
Dear Koichi,
I was very happy to hear from you, and that you have such a position in the Research Laboratories. Unfortunately your letter made me unhappy for you seem to be truly sad. It seems that the influence of your teacher has been to give you a false idea of what are worthwhile problems. The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it.
What values most comes clear at the point, you need to think about how to contribute. The problem itself does not have any value, it is us human beings give the value to the problem. Who cares about the problem? Who would care about your research? Will this research be trivial or important for you?
Some people reply that at least the community should care the proble, if the community cares then you should care. For this point of view, I stick with Dr. Feynman’s idea, as long as there is one person cares about the research problem, you, regardless how trivial the problem is, probably you could spend some time working on it and get the solution that convinces yourself.
I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler, problems until you find some you can really solve easily, no matter how trivial. You will get the pleasure of success, and of helping your fellow man, even if it is only to answer a question in the mind of a colleague less able than you. You must not take away from yourself these pleasures because you have some erroneous idea of what is worthwhile.
How we choose the problem? The wind of Artificial Intelligence is blowing now. However, it also comes and goes. If one claims that he/she is working on Machine Learning, fine, I would consider your work is mostly on the engineering side, with techniques like training and implementation you write a neural network by hands right? Or, at least you should know how the overall structure is and what kind of equation is used. Moreover, there are so many people in the field, why bother to let it go and find something different? Find the problem that no one has thought about, even it is trivial as little people care, you can still choose the small problem and try to give a clean and nice result.
You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods. But at the same time I had another Ph.D. Student (Albert Hibbs) was on how it is that the winds build up waves blowing over water in the sea. I accepted him as a student because he came to me with the problem he wanted to solve. With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own; and left you with a wrong idea of what is interesting or pleasant or important to work on (namely those problems you see you may do something about). I am sorry, excuse me. I hope by this letter to correct it a little.
Some thoughts merge from my own mind, from my own experience. At the beginning of my career, I would write some proposal that follows my instructor’s interests, instead of my own one. Recently, I start to find more research problems that I am actually interested in. Even it is trivial, like “how could we simulate more qubits on classical computers?” Although there are many works including this survey, my solution and approach could still be quite unique - all these add up to my confidence. I uses rust which is different from the main stream python and c++, and I use some library for parallel computing in Rust which add up the scalability of the work. The trivial question becomes interesting and may attract more companies or laboratory working on the direction! Then future, when actually running on the cloud platform, will the simulation help? Why Not!
I have worked on innumerable problems that you would call humble, but which I enjoyed and felt very good about because I sometimes could partially succeed. For example, experiments on the coefficient of friction on highly polished surfaces, to try to learn something about how friction worked (failure). Or, how elastic properties of crystals depends on the forces between the atoms in them, or how to make electroplated metal stick to plastic objects (like radio knobs). Or, how neutrons diffuse out of Uranium. Or, the reflection of electromagnetic waves from films coating glass. The development of shock waves in explosions. The design of a neutron counter. Why some elements capture electrons from the L-orbits, but not the K-orbits. General theory of how to fold paper to make a certain type of child’s toy (called flexagons). The energy levels in the light nuclei. The theory of turbulence (I have spent several years on it without success). Plus all the “grander” problems of quantum theory.
Turbulence is still quite a problem though lol.
No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
This is probably the reason this world loves this physicist so much.
You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself – it is too sad a way to be. now your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are.
You are truly who you are and deserve the love from this world. I once considered I was the one be loved, after some unfortunate in my life, I still think so. I guess the entire essay does not using AI is rare this day, but I hope my sharing would cheer you up a bit, together with Mr. Feynman.
Best of luck and happiness. Sincerely, Richard P. Feynman.
Dick, a giant not only in physics, I sincerely wish I could stand on his position in the area I am working on.