Ah, Peter, lovely story. By chance, we visited Bletchley Park on the
day that the Brits returned--with great ceremony--an Enigma machine to
the Poles, the people who'd first supplied the Brits with one. (We
ourselves have two.)
However, my sense is that pure mathematicians look down a tad on
applied mathematicians. Okay if something you discovered/invented a
hundred years ago turns out to have a practical use today, but to
actually invent/discover math with the hope of finding an application
for it, or with the hope of having it describe some phenomena--useful,
sure; but, you know, intellectually tacky.
P.
On Dec 11, 2011, at 11:24 PM, plissa...@comcast.net wrote:
Prime Theory -- not to be Mocked, or Knocked! My tutor in grad
school math at Cambridge was one Shaun Wylie, dead now; a famoso
number expert. He was a supervisor at Bletchley where a chappie
called Turing worked for him. They broke ENIGMA, that may have won
the war -- certainly shortened it by a year or so. Interestingly,
the Krauts were so convinced of their profs' bloody brilliance that
for years they refused to believe that some bloody non-Aryan Limeys
coulda broken it. Thus giving us lotsa running room!
Being a young ignorant prick (now, regrettably, an Old IP), I made
stupid jokes like that the number one to the nth power had n
divisors. With his modest integrity, he quietly filled me in on
some of the practical uses of prime theory for code breaking. And
he NEVER just talked about math -- he DID things with it!!
There is indeed " more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than thy
philosophy dreams of".
Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures
Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.
1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
