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driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

I was studying discrete mathematics with a book that had mini biographies of the mathematicians that worked on wharever was being explain on that section. And it was one of them, who considered mathematics and art at the same level as painting or sculpting and hated that mathematicians “lower” themselves to do math that were “useful”, like nobody expects the same “useful results” from the art department. This guy worked really hard to only research on pure mathematics and the most “useless” branch of it, number theory. Eventually, his work helped build the necessary mathematics background to make encryption a thing, and now the entire society use his research.

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mcc@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
ChatGPT suggested G.H.Hardy.

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- driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It could be but I don’t remember if they talked about Ramanujam on his bio, and pretty sure that why he’s most famous for.
  
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  - mcc@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    He said this: I have never done anything “useful”. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.
    
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    driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    On the other hand, Hardy denigrates much of the applied mathematics as either being “trivial”, “ugly”, or “dull”, and contrasts it with “real mathematics”, which is how he ranks the higher, pure mathematics.
    
    This part really resonates with my memory of the bio on the book. Thanks for the research!
    
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