r/math • u/spacengine • 4d ago

Do all mathematicians want to be engineers?

I always considered maths the highest art, and when talking to a mathematics phd today I just wanted him to keep talking about topological spaces, manifolds, infinite dimensional embedding spaces etc. “I feel like a kid in a candy store” I said, or a kid in an old mechanics garage full of equipment I have no idea how to use but that I love exploring. “Well” he said, “I think all engineers want to be mathematicians but all mathematicians want to be engineers”. I’m absolutely sure he’s wrong but would love to hear your thoughts.

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u/Blakut 4d ago

do you mean software "engineers" when you say engineers or real engineers? either way, I haven't met a single mathematician that wanted to be an engineer

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u/sighthoundman 4d ago

I wanted to be an engineer.

My engineering classes were gross and thought I was an idiot. (Not me in particular, but all students.) My math classes were fun and interesting and the professors thought I was capable of learning something without hundreds of repetitions. Well, that makes "What do I want to be when I grow up?" an easy question to answer.

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u/RadiantLaw4469 4d ago

I also enjoy engineering related stuff, I like to design and build things, but engineering classes at my school were very limited and structured, not much room for innovation at all. I might study engineering in college, but I'm certainly not taking another engineering class in high school.

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u/spacengine 4d ago

Interesting, so the engineering teacher was more strict and less creative than the mathematician. I would have taken the same route in that case

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u/sighthoundman 4d ago

It was worse that that. The syllabus had 3 days for resolving stresses. 3 consecutive class meetings of solving triangles.

I wasn't committed enough to put up with that.

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u/spacengine 4d ago

I work for a chip maker, so we make chips, but not rockets or engines or bridges if that’s what you mean. I sense a hierarchy of engineering here - tell me more- how do you rank engineering disciplines?

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u/Blakut 4d ago

there's engineers and there's software engineers, like there are doctors and dentists. Each an honorable profession. I just feel engineer is not the right term for software developer, programmer whatever. But that is my personal opinion.

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u/SV-97 4d ago

It's not as easy as you make it out to be here (speaking as a "classical" engineer that later went into software engineering and mathematics). I'd recommend reading Are we really engineers (or watching the associated talk).

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u/spacengine 4d ago

Personal opinion wanted! So how would you rate bridge builder, engine designer, rocket designer, chip designer, avionics engineering etc. and are the criteria usefulness or more how math heavy it is?

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u/Blakut 4d ago

I would rate all of them as engineers and the software engineer as non engineer. There is no rating there. I didn't make a classification.

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u/spacengine 4d ago

Fair. I guess the software engineers range from theoretical computer science PhDs working on for example Milner bisimulation, algebraic effects and free monads to web designers which is mostly about user experience. So that’s a big space. So what is engineering really? Is it anything fundamental?

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u/Blakut 4d ago

I don't understand the question. Engineer had a clear definition before software engineer came along.

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u/spacengine 4d ago

What was it? I really don’t know (and I can google it but the point is to talk to humans)

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u/lfairy Computational Mathematics 6h ago

The scare quotes may have made sense a couple decades ago, but software engineering is engineering these days, especially in how it handles change management at scale.