Find things in which you have an unfair advantage | David Spergel '82

David Spergel '82 is a Professor of Astrophysics and Chair of the Department of Astrophysics at Princeton.

Q. What is some of the advice you give them?

A. Now what I always tell my students and graduate students and postdocs, is to find things in which you have an unfair advantage. This was something that John Paul (who was my mentor at the Institute for Advanced Study) said. Always choose problems as a scientist where you can bring to that problem something new, and that often means coming in with an idea from a new area. Just because data improves with time, there are things that we can do now that people couldn't do 20 years ago—so that becomes your unfair advantage over people in the past. Sometimes you're unfair advantage is a novel perspective on something. I think people who can find an area in which they have an unfair advantage end up going further.

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Produced by Lisa Einstein '13
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