The Importance of Knowing Long Numbers

"i'm really quite proud that nothing i've ever done in my work has any practical significance whatsoever," he says. "It's just for the beauty of finding things out and you know and people say well you never know if it down the road it will have some practical way but i'm pretty certain that everything i've ever worked on will never have a practical You come with that so i had a friend at Cambridge who uh there's a great tradition mathematics at Cambridge."