4 ms·
A funny story related to ECC: I was hanging out with a friend of mine about 10 years ago, and I was asking him what he was researching (he is a math professor
by jedberg 5y ago
A funny story related to ECC: I was hanging out with a friend of mine about 10 years ago, and I was asking him what he was researching (he is a math professor in Colorado). He told me he was researching Ecliptic curves and their properties. So I said, "oh you must be really interested in elliptic curve cryptography then!" and he said, "what's that?".
He was so deeply into math theory that he hadn't even looked at or cared about the practical applications of his work.
- not2b 5y agoThey form a key part of Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem as well as in efforts to unify very disparate parts of mathematics, they aren't just for cryptography.
- jjoonathan 5y agoHa. I have a similar story with chemistry/spectroscopy and representation theory. I was taking a chemistry class where we were learning by rote how to apply the Grand Orthogonality Theorem. We were clearly computing inner products, but I couldn't suss out the big picture and the chem professor didn't know either, so I went to the math department and joined a seminar, which happened to be almost nextdoor to the chemistry class. The professor teaching it had never heard of the applications to chemistry/spectroscopy, though he was delighted to find out. Not 30 yards apart, two groups of people were approaching the same subject from opposite angles with zero awareness of each other. Silos are amazing.