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In the ‘MathsApps’ show we saw that studying maths changed Darren’s life, and it’s not just Darren who has felt the positive effectsof maths in his life. In 1854 two medically-minded people, one in London and one in the Crimea, were using maths to try to save lives.

Meanwhile, in the Crimea whilst the British fought against the Russian Empire, a nurse was waging her own war against disease and injury that were killing the troops. The weapons she used to do this were… graphs. Florence Nightingale, known as the lady of the lamp, did a lot more than just wipe the brows of soldiers. She plotted graphs of the number and causes of deaths. It turned out that most of the deaths were not from injuries, they were from preventable diseases.

Using these graphs she was able to lobby parliament to change the medical conditions in military field hospitals. Thank in part to these changes the death rate of soldiers in India declined from 69 in 1000 to 18 in 1000 in 10 years, statistics she was able to prove with her graphs.

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In London John Snow, Queen Victoria’s Physician, was investigating a cholera outbreak in Soho, London. Cholera is a very unpleasant disease that causes vomiting and diarrhoea and killed 50-60% of the people who caught it. At the time the cause of cholera was not known. John Snow plotted the cases of cholera reported on a map and pinpointed the source as a water pump on Broad Street. This was an early type of modelling. He also used statistics to show the connection between where people got their water from and whether or not they got cholera.

In World War II maths came to the aid of the military again. During this time an amazing team ofmathematicians, language experts and cross-word puzzlers were gathered together at BletchleyPark as the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS). Bletchley was where the German code created by the Enigma machine was cracked in the early 1940s. One of the most important things done at Bletchley was the building of the ‘Bombe’, an early computer. Later, an even moresophisticated computer was built there: Colossus, the world’s first programmable digitalelectronic computer. This all had to be top secret and had a code-named ‘Ultra’. So the hard workand brilliance of the men and women at Bletchley Park was not made public until the 1970s.Project Ultra is thought to have shortened the war by 2-4 years! Saving countless lives.

It’s not just about war. Maths can help us to enjoy ourselves too. In 2012 many people enjoyed watching the London Olympics on television and many visited the places. Mathematical modeling was used to predict how many people would be able to travel from various parts of the UK and the rest of the world. This allowed the railways, trams and buses to make sure that people were able to travel to locations in comfort and make the most of this amazing sporting event in the UK.

You rely on maths to make your life easier and safer all the time. If you buy something on the internet you want to be sure that your details are sent in code so that no-one but the shop you are buying from can use them. The RSA code developed in 1978 does just this. It uses prime numbers to generate a ‘key’ that can be passed online safely. In fact, Clifford Cocks, working at the successor to Bletchley Park, GCHQ, developed this system five years earlier but, again due to the secret nature of this work, this wasn’t made public until 1998.

Prime numbers are now really important in protecting us on the internet and allowing all the changes to our lives that this use of the internet has brought about.

The interest in prime numbers could even change your life, if you can find a proof ofRiemann’s hypothesis. This hypothesis is that there is a formula for finding prime numbersbut it’s never been proved. If you can prove it you could win $1,000,000 as this proof isone of the Millennium Prize Problems. Seven problems were unsolved in 2000, six are stillunsolved. Could you solve the next one? Could maths change your life?

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