Igor Carron commented on his blog that
… the mathematical tools that we will use in the next 20 years are for the most part probably in our hands already.
He compares this to progress in treating leukemia: survival rates increased dramatically over the last 40 years, not primarily by developing new drugs, but by better applying drugs that were available in 1970.
I find that plausible. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of math that was well known 100 years ago.
Related post: Doing good work with bad tools
