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Math and Physics’ Divorce, Poetry, and the Scientific Slowdown
An alternative hypothesis to the 'burden of knowledge' theory of the slowdown
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Eric Gilliam
4
How did places like Bell Labs know how to ask the right questions?
Alternative Title: Why all applied research organizations should hire a Bell-style systems engineer
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Eric Gilliam
3
A Report on Scientific Branch-Creation: How the Rockefeller Foundation helped bootstrap the field of molecular biology
This piece is noticeably longer (twice the length) than the others on this Substack. This is because 1) it is a practically-oriented historical…
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Eric Gilliam
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When do ideas get easier to find?
 • Eric Gilliam
4
What should new-age research organizations be optimizing for?
 • Eric Gilliam
1
A Progress Studies History of Early MIT — Part 1: Training the engineers who built the country
 • Eric Gilliam
How did places like Bell Labs know how to ask the right questions?
 • Eric Gilliam
3
Bombs, Brains, and Science
 • Eric Gilliam
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Irving Langmuir, the General Electric Research Laboratory, and when applications lead to theory
To this point, I’ve written tens of thousands of words on this Substack covering the work of scientists from the early-to-mid-1900s — a golden era of…
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Eric Gilliam
A Progress Studies History of Early MIT — Part 1: Training the engineers who built the country
The MIT Series Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen opened their 2019 Atlantic piece that helped jump-start the progress studies movement with the following…
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Eric Gilliam
When do ideas get easier to find?
And why progress studies may be much older than you think
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Eric Gilliam
4
John von Neumann: A Strange Kind of Bird
What his career can teach us about the nature of scientific creativity.
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Eric Gilliam
4
Bombs, Brains, and Science
Would you rather lose 10% of your researchers or 10% of your labs?
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Eric Gilliam
How Recent Innovation in Jiu-jitsu Helps Us Think About OpenAI’s Future
Check out my guest post for the ChinaTalk Substack on recent innovation in the sport of jiu-jitsu and how it can help us think about OpenAI’s future. In…
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Eric Gilliam
Thomas Edison, Technical Entrepreneur
My piece in Works in Progress
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Eric Gilliam
1
FreakTakes
FreakTakes
Wildly interesting stories and extremely practical takeaways from the most exciting era of American science and engineering
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© 2023 Eric Gilliam
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