I sometimes had this feeling from Conway’s work, in particular, combinatorial game theory and surreal numbers to me feel closer to mathematical invention than mathematical discovery. This kind of things are also often “leaf nodes” on the tree of knowledge, not leading to many followup discoveries, so you could say their counterfactual impact is low for that reason.
In engineering, the best example I know is vulcanization of rubber. It has had a huge impact on today’s world, but Goodyear developed it by working alone for decades, when nobody else was looking in that direction.
I sometimes had this feeling from Conway’s work, in particular, combinatorial game theory and surreal numbers to me feel closer to mathematical invention than mathematical discovery. This kind of things are also often “leaf nodes” on the tree of knowledge, not leading to many followup discoveries, so you could say their counterfactual impact is low for that reason.
In engineering, the best example I know is vulcanization of rubber. It has had a huge impact on today’s world, but Goodyear developed it by working alone for decades, when nobody else was looking in that direction.
Not inconceivable, I would even say plausible, that surreal numbers & combinatorial game theories impact is still in the future.