Pure mathematics

Broadly speaking, pure mathematics is mathematics motivated entirely for reasons other than application. From the eighteenth century onwards, this was a recognised category of mathematical activity, sometimes characterised as speculative mathematics, and at variance with the trend towards meeting the needs of navigation, astronomy, physics, engineering and so on.

Quotations

• There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not someday be applied to the phenomena of the real world. Nikolai Lobachevsky

See also: applied mathematics

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