“When you see a flashy new building that gets built, you think about the architect,” said Timothy Gowers. “But you don’t think quite so much about the structural engineers who were involved in actually working out how such a building could be realised.”
For the Cambridge professor, pure mathematics – the study of mathematical concepts for their own sake – is the engineering that underpins the modern world. The high-tech breakthroughs that so excite politicians – in AI, robotics, biotech – are only possible thanks to the mathematical research that took place years or even decades earlier.
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