I had a terrible time choosing. Feynman. Bret Victor. Alexei Kitaev. David Deutsch. Vernor Vinge. Except I don't think I've (quite) read everything by any of those people.
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Fun question: someone comes to you, asking for papers/books they should read. You are only allowed to say, "Go read everything ____ has ever written".
Who do you choose? (ht to @JaminSpeer, who I tried to quote tweet, but it failed for some reason)
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A request: I suspect a lot of people are recommending people whose work they mostly haven't read. Please only suggest, say, Richard Hamming or David Deutsch, if you've read in detail much of their work, including many of their technical papers.
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(A good first step is spelling the person's name correctly.)
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M. Nielsen would be a strong candidate for me.
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Thank you! That is very kind and gratifying!
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John McPhee
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Great choice. McPhee is astounding.
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For certain areas of mathematics a tongue-in-cheek suggestion is Jean Bourgain. Reading and understanding all his papers is an almost impossible task, but if you manage it, then you'll almost certainly end up a superb mathematician.
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Nice implied prompt: "In [your profession], which single author's work would, if understood in detail, ensure that you were superb at that profession?" For theoretical physics, Feynman is too dated now, but you'd be pretty good.
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Steven Pinker
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Though I don’t love the question. Writers should be judged on their best work, not all their work. If they haven’t written something bad they havent taken enough chances.
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