Popular science article. — Journal of Mathematics in Higher Education, 2006, No4, with. 9308 UDC 51(091). — Electronic publication . Academician Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov (18631945) the founder of the modern theory of the ship was a scientist of encyclopedic mentality . He is the author of many inventions and a number of well-written training courses on ship theory, theoretical mechanics, differential and integral calculus, etc. d. “It is commonly believed that mathematics is the foundation of an engineer’s education and that every engineer should know mathematics. The present essay is devoted to the consideration of the extent to which such a view is correct or incorrect, and at the same time the question of who and how to teach mathematics. Mathematics in its present state is so extensive and diverse that we can safely say that it is completely incomprehensible to the human mind, and, therefore, a strict choice must be made of what mathematics needs to know and why an engineer of this specialty needs to know. In this choice, we can help and the most general review of the historical progress of the development of mathematics and its practical applications. File quality (subjective score on a 10-point scale): 10.