In the past 30 years there have been extensive discoveries in the theory of integrable statistical mechanical models including the discovery of nonlinear differential equations for Ising model correlation functions, the theory of random impurities, level crossing transitions in the chiral Potts model and the use of Rogers–Ramanujan identities to generalize our concepts of Bose/Fermi statistics. Each of these advances has led to the further discovery of major unsolved problems of great mathematical and physical interest. I will here discuss the mathematical advances, the physical insights and extraordinary lack of visibility of this field of physics.