Comment by bmacho

> Also, on the topic of “uninteresting”, if I recall correctly number theory (or discrete math) was explored by a mathematician claiming it’ll never have any application and that’s why he was doing it, only for cryptography to come by within a century after that.

I know a version that the motivation was that they can't use it in wars (so the mathematician was a pacifist instead of an arse). I can't find a source for this anecdote either. I probably heard it about Paul Turán, but anyone doing discrete math at that era (number theory, graphs, combinatorics) would do.