4 ms·
The most famous quote for this is by G. H. Hardy, a famous number theorist. He said: "No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory
by ocharles 13y ago
The most famous quote for this is by G. H. Hardy, a famous number theorist. He said:
"No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many years."
Yet here we are a few decades later with the fundamentals of modern cryptography based on number theory results. Specifically, the difficult in factorizing the product of two primes into the original prime factors (RSA).
So while this specific might seem abstract and without purpose, it often goes in mathematics that we'll find the purpose for it later.
- smutticus 13y agoIn Sid Meier's Civilization you can only build catapults after you research mathematics.
- saraid216 13y agohttp://hwhelp.s3.amazonaws.com/hwhdocs/The%20Math%20Behind%20A%20CatapultMay%20General%20Newsletter.pdf http://hwhelp.s3.amazonaws.com/hwhdocs/The%20Math%20Behind%2... [PDF] Pythagoras: why we throw giant rocks at walls.
- Sharlin 13y agoAnd those fancy JDAMs and other GPS-guided toys wouldn't be nearly as accurate if GPS did not account for the effects of both the special and the general relativity.
- brazzy 13y agoThat's physics, not mathematics (let alone number theory).
- altcognito 13y agoBut sometimes we discover the math to support we discover the physics. Knowing the physics alone is less useful (but not useless) than knowing the underlying mathematical relationship of the physics.
- droogie 13y agoMathematics purists would disagree http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/
- Sharlin 13y agoI referred to the fact that Prof. Hardy specifically mentioned relativity in the quote.
- snowwrestler 13y agoOne of my favorite short science fiction stories is about inter-dimensional warfare in which numbers are the weapons. Dark Integers by Greg Egan http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0710/Dark.shtml http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0710/Dark.shtml