>>13155950Ironic because the last 10-15 years has been really good for practical applications of topology and knots. Algebraic topology shows up a lot in data analysis, dimensionality reduction, and geometry in CS. Topology and algebraic geometry naturally show up in robotics.
I always think it’s funny how everyone sneers at mathematicians for developing a piece of pure mathematics but then suddenly pretending they didn’t 20 years later when that piece is used in some fundamental way in practical science and engineering. You did it to group theory before applications in chemistry and physics. You did it to combinatorics before classic algorithms. You did it to ring theory and number theory before cryptography. You never learn