Material that shaped my attitude towards PhD

Wednesday, 2nd Sep 2020. I had been working from home for more than 4 months at that stage, the institute having closed due to the Covid lockdown. The first few months passed eventfully, as I was engaged in mathematical derivations that would eventually lead to these two papers . On this particular day, I remember a wave of fatigue hitting me as I sat down to begin my work routine. I ended up taking a nap, reading a book, watching an hour long masterclass on YouTube, and finished the day feeling refreshed and recharged. The rest of this article about the book I read that day, and other books that I read during my PhD journey that helped shape my attitude towards research.

My labmate, Aritra Santra , had recommended the intriguingly titled "A PhD is Not Enough" by Peter Feibelman to me a few weeks into the lockdown. I had procured a copy of the book but not yet gotten around to reading it. Being closer to the end of my PhD than the beginning, I was probably apprehensive about what such a grimly titled book might have in store for me. What if I hadn't been doing enough? What if I had been doing something wrongly all this time?

Oddly enough, it was this book with the seemingly-ominous title that made me perk up on that bleak Wednesday. Feibelman is a physicist by training who had gone on to work in a research lab after his PhD. In this fast-paced book, he underlines and double-underlines the importance of communicating one's ideas properly over the course of their research career. The most repeated three-word phrase that my supervisors told me during my training was: "Tell A Story", that is, to weave a narrative around your scientific results, putting them in perspective of how it contributes to what is already known, and what this might mean for the future research. Feibelman's book not only expounds - using hilarious examples - on the topic of scientific communication but also offers several useful pointers about career options after a PhD, whether or not one should go for postdoctoral training, and caveats to remember if one does choose to do a postdoctoral stint. The book has fewer than 150 pages, and I finished it in one sitting. It also gave me the impetus to watch a video that I had bookmarked a while ago, in which Dr. Patrick Winston from MIT offers a class on communication skills. The contents of the video dovetailed brilliantly with the book I had just finished reading. The day was certainly looking brighter now. IIT Bombay requires all PhD students to take two courses on communication skills before they graduate. I had taken these courses in my first year, and enjoyed listening to the engaging anecdotes and tips shared by active researchers. The book and the video mentioned above proved to be a timely refresher course.

On the topic of communication, colleagues at my current lab have mentioned "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White, and "Style: the Basics of Clarity and Grace" as excellent books. They also speak highly of the video series on scientific writing offered by Stanford University. I have not had a chance to go through them yet, but I thought I will mention the names here in case you are interested.

The Black Swan?by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Someone once said that all models are lies, but some models are useful. In this fascinating book, Taleb delves deep into mathematical modeling and psychology. He explains how many people prefer to have?some?prediction—no matter how wrong—rather than have no prediction at hand. The expensive and widespread consequences of such an attitude is laid out in splendid detail in this book. Mandatory reading for anyone working in predictive modeling of any kind.

Genius: A biography of Richard Feynman?by James Gleick

This was gifted to me by my wife, Shreemoyee Kumar, PhD , and offers a lucid insight into the workings of a brilliant mind. I had the good fortune of reading it in the first year of my PhD. The irrefutable value of theoretical and computational research in advancing science is illustrated in this book through the life of Feynman.

Chaos?by James Gleick

I came across this book a couple of years into my PhD and it was such a thrill to read about the anguish and joy that accompanies any research effort. Gleick masterfully traces the history of chaos theory, painting in fine-grained detail the lives and thoughts of scientists who have contributed to this field. While the achievements of scientists are greeted with much fanfare, it is not often that the scientific method, the process, is treated to the kind of attention that Gleick has managed to bestow upon in this book. Mandatory reading for anyone looking to pursue a career in research, irrespective of their background or specialization.

The Hunt for Vulcan?by Thomas Levenson

This is a smaller book than “Chaos”, but is crafted in the same spirit: it tells the remarkable story of how a new planet was “invented” to explain the perceived wobble in Mercury’s orbit around the sun, how Einstein provided an alternate explanation for the wobble without invoking the need for a hitherto-unobserved-planet, and finally, how experiments confirmed Einstein’s theory, thus relegating the made-up planet to the trash bin. A tight narrative that presents the crux of the scientific process in faithful detail. Again, a must read for anyone embarking on a career in research.

I would like to round off this piece by pointing to three additional reading material.

(A) "Writing a Paper " by George Whitesides. While not all the points mentioned in the article are uniformly applicable to all disciplines, the majority of them are. I am grateful to my supervisors for referring me to this early on in my PhD.

An important aspect of the PhD training is the patience and perseverance that it demands of you. Talking to yourself is a crucial aspect of the journey, and I found these two material to have profoundly shaped my attitude towards long-term ventures.

(B) The resignation letter of Sam Hinkie, the man behind the phrase, "Trust the Process". I read this during my time as an intern at a startup, right before I joined the PhD program. The words of an MBA graduate from Stanford and the general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team hold value and meaning for aspiring scientists and researchers as well.

(C) "The Book of Mirdad" by Mikhail Naimy. An allegorical story that would go on to shape my perspective on life and research.

Edit: Wanted to include a link to this lovely writeup by Nijeesh Padmanabhan on actionable recommendations to cultivate the reading habit. Link: https://www.nijeesh.in/post/the-why-and-how-to-of-reading