>>11708725>>11708784I think there are many issues into what constitutes a contribution. I think the first porblem is with
> is extremely rare for someone described as a "mathematical physicist" to do something relevantI don't disagree with this, but I find this a problem of trying to define strong borders with interdisciplinary fields, and defining what you do based on your backround. Witten is a prime example of someone who has clearly developed shit in mathematical physics but he is just a "physicists". Going a bit back, hamilton done one of the best examples of mathematical physics and he consider himself a mathematician. The thing is that mathematical physics has been associated with schools who try to prove shit the physicists already developed. This is what people usually say by results that are not really relevant to physicists, but the thing is that certainly isn't what makes something a development in mathematical physics. So by not excluding the other examples it is much more clear that mathematical physics has contributed to physics massively.The best examples are in the application of topology in physics.
However I believe the sort of weird ultrapragmatism that the physics community sometimes teaches, is not a good justification to dismiss foundational questions. It may not get you to the latests theories in physics, but many results in physics have yet to be rigorously proven. The thing is, that if you want to make claims about the consitency of your theory and to have mathematical justifications of what you use, well you need to have a proper justification, if not it is not clear at all that what you are using acutally follows from your premises. Obviously this doesn't invalidate the way things are done, but it shows it is lacking in a structure other physical theories have.
But the best examples are in statistical mechanics, scaterring theory, pde theory for fluids and non perturbative QFT.
