Scientists, or the highly educated demographic, are a very special group. They may not have a lot of wealth, but to some extent, much of society's wealth growth is built on their efforts.
If you must make an analogy, they are like the engine of social wealth growth, doing the hardest work in fields invisible to the public.
It's like how after a normal family buys a car, besides maintenance or repair, no one would purposely open the hood every day to check the engine.
Yes, everyone knows the engine is important, but when there's nothing wrong, no one bothers to look at it.
Because most ordinary people do not know how the engine works or understand its principle. They only need to know that it still works and hasn't broken down.
Mathematicians are like the engine of the academic world, doing the hardest and most tiring work, yet public awareness of mathematics is mostly limited to whether there are any handy tools to use.
