Professor Planck, of Berlin, the famous originator of the Quantum Theory, once remarked to me that in early life he had thought of studying economics, but had found it too difficult! Professor Planck could easily master the whole corpus of mathematical economics in a few days. He did not mean that! But the amalgam of logic and intuition and the wide knowledge of facts, most of which are not precise, which is required for economic interpretation in its highest form is, quite truly, overwhelmingly difficult for those whose gift mainly consists in the power to imagine and pursue to their furthest points the implications and prior conditions of comparatively simple facts which are known with a high degree of precision.(Keynes, Essays in Biography 1951 158n)It's true: powerful mathematical minds are not necessarily comfortable with the messiness of the real world. This observation might be applied as well to string (or more formal or mathematical) theorists vs theorists who are more data- or intuition-driven (often called phenomenologists, in a terrible use of terminology). Of course, some people (like Feynman, although he wasn't very mathematical by today's standards) are good at everything...
"We know a lot more than we can prove" -- Feynman
