I think a pretty overwhelming majority of math research funding comes from the fact that math departments are service departments for engineering, physics, etc.<p>The NSF spends a total of just under 250 million per year on math research. The DoD and DoE also have around 100 million each. Some mathematicians estimate [1] about 30k mathematicians in the US, which at a conservative salary of 50k per year (!) is already 1.5 billion.<p>In other words, either gov&#x27;t agencies would have to roughly triple their funding (just for math), or about a third of mathematicians would lose their jobs. These are, of course, very rough estimates.<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mathoverflow.net&#x2F;questions&#x2F;5485&#x2F;how-many-mathematicians-are-there" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mathoverflow.net&#x2F;questions&#x2F;5485&#x2F;how-many-mathematicia...</a>