There have been a number of Scientific discoveries that seemed to be purely scientific curiosities that later turned out to be incredibly useful. Hertz famously commented about the discovery of radio waves: “I do not think that the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical application.”
Are there examples like this in math as well? What is the most interesting “pure math” discovery that proved to be useful in solving a real-world problem?
Well Wassily Wassilyevich Leontief won a Nobel prize in economics for his work on this subject that might help you get started
There’s no such thing as a Nobel Prize in economics. Economists got salty about this and came up with the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, and rely on the media shortening it to something that gets confused with real Nobel Prizes.
Fair point