Less tangible value than mathematics? The last few decades have been a golden age of linear and constraint programming research. The impact they've had on logistics alone is incalculable - it's changed how everyone does business from Ford and Fedex down to Uber drivers. Almost every mass manufacturer in the world uses them in one way or another to optimize their processes. I can't imagine an academic field that has had more impact on industry.

That is interesting. Can you give some concrete example of how linear programming optimized some process?

Most trivial and ubiqitous example is CAM which finds the path a CNC machine tool should take to translate a 3D model into a real part as efficiently as possible. At this point probably every physical product on the market involves CAM work somewhere in its production, either for the product or the machinery making it.

Thanks for answering, however I tried to search for "linear programming in CAM" and also skimmed wikipedia on CAM and linear programming and came up with nothing. Can you please point me to some resource on this?

I highly disagree with you, but that's besides the point. Even supposing you are right, how does this relate to the point I was making?

(I also find it amusing that you categorize physics as "too big to make such an asinine comment about", but mathematics not)

> how does this relate to the point

My point is that the only counterexamples you could find to "industry labs > research labs" were in completely non-industrial scenarios like Mathematics and Neuroscience, two famously theoretical disciplines

Mathematics might be plenty large in theory-space, but real-world applicability is much more the domain of physics and thus I would expect many real-world applications to arise from it. So, to me, it's clear one cannot say Physics doesn't deliver on the physical from time to time