3 ms·
Do any of the unsolved problems have any practical applications? Could solutions lead to other results?
by relyks 9y ago
Do any of the unsolved problems have any practical applications? Could solutions lead to other results?
- analog31 9y agoOne thing I've noticed is that some of the great problems, such as Fermat's Last Theorem, spawned entire fields of math, from which applications may have developed. It wouldn't shock me if some advances in cryptography were spinoffs of progress in pure math. Then there's the prize for progress towards understanding the Navier-Stokes equation of fluid dynamics.
- msds 9y agoIt would shock me if any significant advances in cryptography weren't progress in pure math.
- torrent-of-ions 9y agoThe answer to both is quite possibly, but we don't know. History has seen many mathematical curiosities gaining important practical applications, sometimes hundreds of years later. Indeed, much of computer science is based upon mathematics which was at one time impractical. A good example is strong encryption, the foundations for which were built long before we had machines that were able to implement it.