ABSTRACT
Information technology, computer science and numerical mathematics are in an obvious sense the successors and representatives of applied mathemat ics. Life testifies that the terms “pure” and “applied” mathematics not only persist in current parlance, but also embody distinct scientific phenomena, provoking endless and vigorous discussions and controversies, despite the weaknesses inherent in the terms. Science methodologists and ordinary mathematicians, pondering over the subject, state routinely that the hall mark of the mathematics of the former Soviet Union as opposed to, say, American mathematics, is a unifying tendency to distinguish and emphasise common features as well as to develop a single mathematical culture and relevant infrastructure. For Russian specialists, the division and distinction of pure and applied mathematics usually involves collisions, emotions, or at least unease. Meanwhile, the separate existence of, say, the American Math ematical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics seems perfectly natural to American scholars.
