We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will... — Katherine Johnson

We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will always be science, engineering, and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics.

Author: Katherine Johnson

Insight: Mathematics has this strange permanence that other fields don't quite manage. Trends come and go—entire industries pivot, popular interests shift, but the basic truth that two plus two equals four remains stubbornly, uselessly immortal. It doesn't care what's fashionable. It doesn't need funding announcements or viral moments to stay true. What makes Johnson's observation particularly sharp is that it's not really about math being important, which is obvious. It's about math being inevitable. You can imagine a world that stops caring about physics or biology for a generation, where research budgets dry up and young people chase something else. But someone, somewhere, will always need to count, measure, predict, and build. The moment you have a problem that needs solving in the real world, mathematics shows back up at your door, whether you invited it or not. This matters now because we often treat STEM like other career paths—something to promote or discourage based on current job markets or cultural enthusiasm. But Johnson's point cuts through that noise: mathematics isn't something we choose to keep around. It's something we keep discovering we never left in the first place. The question isn't whether it will matter, but whether we'll stay curious enough to understand it.