A curated reading list on science, research, and writing – timeless advice, perspective, and inspiration for students and colleagues.
With gratitude to J. Simpson-Porco, who has thoughtfully assembled a similar collection and provided the inspiration for this page.
Philosophical Psychology lectures by P. Meehl (see also B. Recht's commentary)
Learning to Learn lectures by R. Hamming
engineeringhistory - interviews with legends like B. Anderson, K. Åström, R. Brockett, C. Desoer, L. Ljung, S. Morse, and M. Wonham.
U. Alon - How to Choose a Good Scientific Problem
J. Baez - Advice for the Young Scientist
E. W. Dijkstra - Three Golden Rules for Research
E. Feron - Why do a PhD? and How do you recognize a worthy PhD thesis?
R. Hamming - A Stroke of Genius and You and Your Research
S. Boyd - Crimes Against Matrices
B. Francis - Elements of Mathematical Style
D. Lemire - Write Good Papers (slides)
A. D. Lewis - LaTeX Do's and Don'ts
P. Halmos - How to write mathematics (the book contains similar pieces by Dieudonné, Schiffer, and Steenrod)
J. Hespanha - Writing a Control Paper
T. Tao - Advice on writing papers
J. Baez - Azimuth
N. Higham - Blog
M. Raginsky - The Art of the Realizable
B. Recht - argmin
T. Tao - What's new