Graduate programs connecting physics and math

[sesinka]

Hi, from relating posts I can't decide how things really are.

I'm B.S. of General Physics studying for M.S. of Mathematical Modeling (1st year of 2). It cost huge amount of energy to gain necessary mathematical knowledge (Functional Analysis, PDEs classical+modern, Various lectures of Numerical Methods etc.)
I had to learn many things myself in last year because my Bachelor studies required only limited math knowledge and I spend huge amount of my time in Lab with experiments during my B.studies so I hadn't any time for study Mathematics.

Now is hard to say what my specialization is, I consider myself as "Physicist doing math", but is like schism - sort of. My impression of reading posts is that in US, Canada and some other places, is possible to study only "pure" things (f.e. Pure Math) on Graduate level (PhD), when one doesn't want be an engineer. Am I right ?

I would like to do both in some way, I'm work so hard to gain (and grow) knowledge that I don't want to leave it. And I like both of them. (And I don't want to do double PhD)

Have you any suggestions which branch would be suitable for me ?

There are any Graduate programs in US or Canada that could possibly fit to me ?

Thanks for your advice

[sesinka]

Ok, maybe it was too wide question... What about applied math studies with some if-it-is-possible useful results for physics ?

[neo86]

There is the field of so called mathematical physics , which tries to work out the things done in physics in a mathematical rigorous way. This could be the way to go in your case. But I don't know how popular that topic is in the US, at least here in Germany there is some research done in that direction. Here is some sort of surjective overview on the topic mathematical physics written by the professor who teaches my mathematical QM course (no fear it's in english ;-)): Overview (http://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~lerdos/WS08/QM/mp.pdf)

Let me know if you found it interesting