Robert Solow was once asked (by a very famous mathematician whose name I have forgotten) whether there was anything in the social sciences that was not obvious or trivial.

FORBES: Most Economics is Just Organised Common Sense

In 1900, David Hilbert, a German mathematician and contemporary of Einstein's, in a famous speech to the International Congress of Mathematicians, presented a list of what he considered to be the 23 most important problems for the new century.

ECONOMIST: Mathematics

It is that as a mathematician he discovered - alone and unaided - the binomial theory usually attributed to a famous English scholar called Isaac Newton.

BBC: Part Three - France and the World