What are strange , obscure , ignored fields of mathematics?

[Samardar]

Any Ideas? That are outside the mainstream?

 

[ahsanxr]

You a hippie or something?

 

[Oriako]

I would actually be very interested in knowing about this as well. From what I've come across, the most dead fields seem to be Calculus of Variations, Morse Theory, and k-theory.

 

[Functor97]

You a hippie or something?

:rofl: That actually made me laugh out loud.

 

[Functor97]

I would actually be very interested in knowing about this as well. From what I've come across, the most dead fields seem to be Calculus of Variations, Morse Theory, and k-theory.

K-theory, Morse Theory dead? I believe you are quite mistaken.

 

[Oriako]

K-theory, Morse Theory dead? I believe you are quite mistaken.

"The most dead", from what I've seen... I could be hugely mistaken, I just can't think of any other fields of math that would be less active (or have less researchers in them) or whatever it is that drops the frequency of published papers.

 

[Functor97]

"The most dead", from what I've seen... I could be hugely mistaken, I just can't think of any other fields of math that would be less active (or have less researchers in them) or whatever it is that drops the frequency of published papers.

K theory is of vital interest to string theorists. It is by no means a "dead" topic.

 

[Anonymous217]

Foliations, Fractals? Haven't seen much work on foliations since Thurston and not much on fractals beyond recreation. No clue how obscure you mean though. There aren't really obscure fields that haven't been researched into anymore. Granted, if there was one, most mathematicians would jump at the opportunity to be a pioneer in the field.

Perhaps the most 'dead' fields would be ones that have been practically cleaned out.

 

[Monocles]

Foliations and fractals have gotten a lot of renewed interest in them in the past couple of decades due to non-commutative geometry.

 

[Anonymous217]

^ In particular (not sure about fractals), I haven't seen much work in foliations since the '70s, on Thurston and Haefliger's publications. I'm not too sure if there are any recent developments within the 2000's.

 

[Oriako]

Can anyone think of any others? Is Category theory really popular?

 

[micromass]

I would actually be very interested in knowing about this as well. From what I've come across, the most dead fields seem to be Calculus of Variations, Morse Theory, and k-theory.

LOL at thinking K-theory is dead

 

[Anonymous217]

Can anyone think of any others? Is Category theory really popular?

http://arxiv.org/list/math.CT/current
I'd say that's pretty popular.

 

[Oriako]

LOL at thinking K-theory is dead

Oops! Well now I know not to believe what I hear from one person who is also an undergraduate XD.

@Anonymous217: Which fields have been so well studied that there is not much left to do?

 

[med17k]

The most dead part of mathematics is high school algebra . there have been no research papers in this field since centuries

 

[micromass]

A field which is dead is something like "constructive geometry". Given a figure, can we construct it with ruler and compass. Such a problems are now easily solved by Galois theory and I have no knowledge of research papers from that area. That doesn't mean that Galois theory is dead however.

General topology is a dying field, in my opinion. There are less and less research papers from that area. We can say that general topology is "solved". There are some unsolved problems, but they are rather obscure...

 

[Dembadon]

I'd add this to the list:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathematics-inconsistent/