The title of the article is somewhat strange in that it sounds like Mathematics doesn't have many real world applications. On the other hand I believe that the title of the article is very effective for people to share it or even as an attention grabber.
Well, a lot of people also believe that most modern mathematics is more abstract theory and rarely applied outside of its own field. Her work seems very closely tied to physics. So I don't think explicitly mentioning that she did applied maths is bad, especially for lay people
Given the proximity to physics, that is very often untrue. Because of how abstract logic and maths are, analogies from maths often inform us about the physical world.
Much of cutting edge physics doesn't have practical applications either, whether it's dark matter and string theory, early universe cosmology or astrophysics. =)
Are you really suggesting that the majority of current research in pure math has practical applications in physics or other sciences? I just don't think that's true.
