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Pretty amazing that someone discovered and explored number theory without knowing if there would be an application to it. Hopefully they lived to see its usage.
by nuancebydefault 3y ago
Pretty amazing that someone discovered and explored number theory without knowing if there would be an application to it. Hopefully they lived to see its usage.
- jampekka 3y agoNumber theory was a big deal already in ancient greece and probably got there from Babylonia, so it's probably safe to say that they didn't live to see the public key crypto usage. :) But (integer) numbers and their behavior had huge significance in the ancient worldview, and still do even in our days if you look deep enough. And the Pythagoreans et al applied number theory in e.g. music.