[falcor84]

But the thing with "pure" math, is that it can unexpectedly get adulterated by debased concerns such as enabling cryptography for the world economy.

[cubefox]

I doubt that pure mathematics can claim the success of cryptography. For example, no result from advanced mathematics is required to know that factoring the product of two large prime numbers is slow.

[JambalayaJimbo]

The fact that mathematicians cannot devise a method to factor that large product, despite large amounts of money and research time, is what’s valuable!

But even then your argument breaks down when you consider more complicated cryptographic structures.

[cubefox]

> The fact that mathematicians cannot devise a method to factor that large product, despite large amounts of money and research time, is what’s valuable!

Well, programmers couldn't devise such a method either. You seem to assume that mathematicians are better than them at finding efficient algorithms, which isn't very plausible.

> But even then your argument breaks down when you consider more complicated cryptographic structures.

Even if help of mathematics is needed there, applied — rather than pure — math might still be sufficient.