Does all computer science research involve heavy usage of mathematics?
The sad truth is that you absolutely don't need CS for most practical programming tasks.

But without a CS degree, you will have nearly zero chance for the better programming jobs.

Furthermore, without a high-level math/cs knowledge, your mental skills remain significantly under-developed, compared to your own possibilities or to the ones who actually got this degree.

The sad truth is, that the job of a programmer, the ability to write a program what a customer pays for, is hard, but it is an absolutely different type of knowledge, like to know the math of the General Relativity. This truth is so sad, so catastrophal, that you will likely spent some decades of your life, whining on it. But it is the truth.

CS, its math, yes it is such a knowledge. For example, to understand, why there is no such thing as "best compressor" (more exactly: there is, but there is no program what could implement it), is a similarly complex and interesting knowledge, like cutting edge physics. But you absolutely don't need this skill to be a well-going programmer selecting freely between well-paying jobs.

This is how the world works. You can fight it, you can whine on it. I did both of them, decades long.... and I never became a scientist, only a programmer.

These fights and these tears are yet before you.

My advice would be this: learn that math, and get your degree. So:


you will fight
you will whine
you won't ever use it
and you won't be ever a scientist.


But


you will be a better man
you will be a smarter man
you will be able to choose freely between well-paying programmer jobs.


Believe me: if you do this now, you will be pride for that in your whole life. Despite the lifelong pain of your never reached goals.