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Robbert Dijkgraaf

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge

 
Hay Festival 2017, 

The Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton replays and updates his predecessor, Abraham Flexner’s classic 1939 treatise, which describes a great paradox of scientific research: the search for answers to deep questions, motivated solely by curiosity and without concern for applications, often leads not only to the greatest scientific discoveries but also to the most revolutionary technological breakthroughs.

Robbert Dijkgraaf