What are the real applications of pure mathematics?


I have utterly no evidence to support this, but my sense is that bright minds seek tough targets, regardless of their utility to humanity.

If we somehow drove the same bright minds who now engage pure mathematics into an engagement of, say, “pure psychology”, whatever that may be, our applied world would surely be different. It is altogether too easy to say that advances in pure mathematics often lead to unanticipated advances in the welfare of humanity. Perhaps this is occasionally true, but the relationship is by no means guaranteed to be a sort of net positive.

By Ronald Marks.