Two mathematicians, Barry Mazur and Edward Frenkel,
have, for rhetorical effect, badly misrepresented the
history of some basic fields of mathematics. Mazur and
Frenkel like to emphasize the importance of new
research by claiming that it connects fields that previously
had no known connection— when, in fact, the fields were
known to be connected since at least the nineteenth century.
For Mazur, see The Proof and the Lie; for Frenkel, see posts
tagged Frenkel-Metaphors.
See also a story and video on Robert Langlands from the
Toronto Star on March 27, 2015:
"His conjectures are called functoriality and
reciprocity. They made it possible to link up
three branches of math: harmonic analysis,
number theory, and geometry.
To mathematicians, this is mind-blowing stuff
because these branches have nothing to do
with each other."
For a much earlier link between these three fields, see the essay
"Why Pi Matters" published in The New Yorker last month.