apply
Explanation
This comic satirizes the relationship between abstract mathematics and practical applications. In the first panel, a professor excitedly announces: "Great news! Your obscure mathematical theorem now has applications!" A group of mathematicians immediately respond with a horrified "NOOOOOO!"
The joke flips the expected reaction. Normally, scientists would be thrilled to learn their work has real-world applications, since "practical impact" is often used to justify research funding. But these mathematicians are pure math devotees who take pride in the uselessness of their work. The idea that their beautiful, abstract theorem might be sullied by practical application fills them with dread.
In the next panel, the professor clarifies: "...to string theory." The mathematicians are instantly relieved: "Oh thank God, thank God. You scared me." The second layer of the joke is that string theory, while technically physics, is itself so far from experimentally verified or practically useful that it barely counts as an "application" in any meaningful sense. The mathematicians are reassured because string theory is almost as abstract and untethered from reality as pure mathematics itself.
The comic pokes fun at both the ivory-tower pride of pure mathematicians and the ongoing criticism of string theory as a branch of physics that has yet to produce testable predictions, effectively making it applied mathematics' version of pure mathematics.