The prioritization of Calculus over Number Theory likely has weeded out multitudes of would-be significant mathematicians.

Our obsession with justifying the learning of Math with immediate practical use eliminated all the mathematics of curiosity. It’s a result of an ever increasing time preference where inflation puts an upward difficulty adjustment on the justification.

Turns out we don’t have anything close to cryptography without dudes in the 1700s obsessing their entire life over finding prime numbers.