I was studying discrete mathematics with a book that had mini biographies of the mathematicians that worked on wharever was being explain on that section. And it had one of them, who considered mathematics an art at the same level as painting or sculpting and hated that mathematicians "lower" themselves to do math that were "useful", like nobody expects the same "useful results" from the art department. This guy worked really hard to only research on pure mathematics and the most "useless" branch of it, number theory. Eventually, his work helped build the necessary mathematics background to make encryption a thing, and now the entire society use his research. It's a shame I can't remember the name of the guy.

This may have applications to "obscure physics topic"

-- Mathematicians I know trying to justify their work well knowing that it has no applications

Idk man I've seen mathematicians at my university shudder at applied math and they were kind of half joking and half not. Not all of the faculty were like that though, some of them had a wide range of interests! My favourite was a wonderful Polish professor named Edward who knew tons of things about not just math but also computer science, physics, and chemistry.

Mathematician be like:

Hey engineer ! What if we kissed at the intersection of two parallel lines ?? 😳

Haha just kiding....

Unless ... ? 👉👈

On the other hand, physicists who think a correct mathematical result proves anything, despite the logic behind being flawed, are the real issue.