Useless Mathematicians?
A pair of recent advancements in related fields have made me question the role of pure mathematicians in our society.
Researchers took a huge step towards cutting down the world’s malaria problem this week. Millions of people die from malaria each year, so Jason Rasgon decided to do something about it. He took part in developing a mosquito that is resistant to malaria, thus playing god by putting the evolutionary engine of natural selection into the geneticically engineered hot rod in his garage. Many people may end up owing their lives to Jason Rasgon and his super mosquitos.
Meanwhile, 19 mathematicians spend 4 years of their lives to solve a math problem. The problem has been named E8, a 248-dimensional math puzzle that is a part of the “Lie Group”, which descrbes symmetrical objects. The “solution” worked out to a matrix with 205 trillion elements that are themselves equations. A very popular way to describe this solution is as follows:
If written out on paper, the calculation describing this structure, known as E8, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.
Well, congratulations. I cannot find any conclusive information on how solving E8 will lead to a better standard of living, and I suspect that there is no such information. I’m not saying that the 19 mathematicians that took four years to solve this problem wasted their time, but as Jason Rasgon proved, there are more important real-life problems that need the attention of intelligent minds.
Richa wrote:
I’m going to have to disagree with you on this. The entire point of research and development is not to solve real-life problems, but to extend human knowledge and to foster innovation. To solve the problems we don’t know we have. Moreover, there’s no saying that solving E8 will not have an important real-life application a few years down the road, if it doesn’t already.
There are plenty of intelligent minds trained in the proper fields working on solving real-world problems, whether or not they have something to show for it. What would really be useless is throwing a bunch of mathematicians at a medical issue.
Posted 21 Mar 2007 at 1:10 pm ¶
Dev wrote:
If the solution of E8 ends up being significant, it will be a surprise to everyone, including the people who solved it.
I didn’t really want to make this a battle between fields, but more about emphasis within fields. If the medical field discovered a solvent that can grow fingernails at a rapid pace while mathematicians created an algorithm that improved the crash efficiency of automobiles, then the argument would have been turned around.
There came a time for both parties mentioned in this entry to choose a problem to attack. It appears to me that the mathematicians chose E8 because it was hard but feasibly solvable.
Posted 21 Mar 2007 at 7:10 pm ¶