{"id":205,"date":"2026-05-08T05:35:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T05:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/?p=205"},"modified":"2026-05-08T05:35:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T05:35:43","slug":"is-pure-math-hard-what-type-of-people-would-study-pure-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/2026\/05\/08\/is-pure-math-hard-what-type-of-people-would-study-pure-math\/","title":{"rendered":"Is pure math hard? What type of people would study pure math?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quora.com\/Is-pure-math-hard-What-type-of-people-would-study-pure-math\/answer\/Alexandre-Borovik\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">answer to a question on Quora<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start\">Any mathematics is hard, not only pure mathematics, but pure mathematics is special, and is perhaps is hardest of all. I love this motto coined by my colleague Rob Wilson:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"q-relative qu-color--gray\">\n<p class=\"q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start\"><strong>Mathematics: solving tomorrow\u2019s problems yesterday.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"q-absolute qu-borderRadius--pill QTextBlockQuote___StyledAbsolute-sc-21084cfb-0 jPbKoe\">Of course, it is about pure mathematics \u2014 applied mathematics solves today\u2019s problems, and solves today. But it was pure mathematics which had ready mathematical methods for physicists when they started to develop the general relativity theory and quantum mechanics, and for cryptographers when they needed computer based methods for signing and authenticating electronic documents, including financial documents and money transactions \u2014 the very existence of the global financial system now depends on this tools based on mathematics of yesteryear.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start\">So,\u00a0what type of people would study pure math?\u00a0People who love precise, concise, very abstract thinking, people who value clarity of thought. Serious study of pure mathematics means choosing a specific lifestyle: first of all, you have to love the process of thinking, deep systematic thinking with full concentration of all your attention on it. Also, you have to have a sufficiently long attention span, ability to think, and do nothing else, for long periods of time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start\">So, the shortest answer to your question:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"q-relative qu-color--gray\">\n<p class=\"q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start\"><strong>People who love to think.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>As a comment, I added later:<\/p>\n<p>My own experience of application of mathematics was just picking from a shelf something known (in \u201dpure\u201d mathematics) for some time, and known for completely different reasons. The hard part was to understand what engineers want from you, ignoring their clumsy efforts to express that mathematically, and looking at the core of the *raw* problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My answer to a question on Quora: Any mathematics is hard, not only pure mathematics, but pure mathematics is special, and is perhaps is hardest of all. I love this motto coined by my colleague Rob Wilson: Mathematics: solving tomorrow\u2019s problems yesterday. Of course, it is about pure mathematics \u2014 applied mathematics solves today\u2019s problems, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/borovik.net\/selecta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}