Well, it often leads both ways. With Ed Witten, physics has led to new math and a Fields medal for him. And the other way, Galois and group theory has led to all sorts of goodies in physics with gauge theory etc. I had voted to close, but am now apologizing :) Recently, Andrew Hodges, an Oxford mathematician and writer of an excellent biography of Alan Turing, called Enigma wrote a paper with Nima Arkani-Hamed--Twistors, and Alain Connes, another Fields medal mathematician, has been using non-commutative geometry for interesting speculations on physics (even if he has admitted problems with the theory---great man.) Then, there is Mad Max Tegmark and his theory that all mathematical stuctures have a physical reality which is the ultimate in Platonism :)

Well, it often leads both ways. With Ed Witten, physics has led to new math and a Fields medal for him. And the other way, Galois and group theory has led to all sorts of goodies in physics with gauge theory etc. I had voted to close, but am now apologizing :) Recently, Andrew Hodges, an Oxford mathematician and writer of an excellent biography of Alan Turing, called Enigma wrote a paper with Nima Arkani-Hamed--Twistors, and Alain Connes, another Fields medal mathematician, has been using non-commutative geometry for interesting speculations on physics (even if he has admitted problems with the theory---great man.) Then, there is Mad Max Tegmark and his theory that all mathematical stuctures have a physical reality which is the ultimate in Platonism :)