2 ms·
If I know that I am not going to make any new discoveries about it, is there anything else I can do by learning topology?
by whatshisface 4y ago
If I know that I am not going to make any new discoveries about it, is there anything else I can do by learning topology?
- bobbylarrybobby 4y agoMath is enjoyable to learn for its own sake :)
- pkoird 4y agoNot just that, many mathematical advances have been made well before physical applications ever caught up. For example, Calculus was invented in the late seventeenth century while Maxwell only used it to discover EM equations in the 19th century. Similarly, matrices existed way before QM was even formalized but now it heavily relies on Matrix Algebra. Number Theory had no usage whatsoever until it suddenly had in cryptography. Therefore, nowadays, I have begun to think of any new mathematical inventions as a possible prelude to the future.
- soVeryTired 4y agoThe short answer is: sorta. Robert Ghrist has done some work applying topological work to "real-world" problems [0]. I use scare quotes here because while his work is interesting, I'm not sure it allows industry to do anything it couldn't have done before. There's also quite a large body of (academic) work applying topological methods to robotics. Robots have complex configuration spaces and apparently topological methods can help us understand those spaces. [0] https://www2.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/notes.html https://www2.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/notes.html