An Intellectual Vocation In his book “The Soul of a University” (2018), Chris Brink describes the story of G.H. Hardy, a Cambridge Mathematician whose principled stance on his academic research was that it had no practical use whatsoever: “No discovery of mine” Hardy proudly wrote, “has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world”