Codebreakers
MATHEMATICS is often desperately abstract. Yet it has a great deal to say about the world, from bombs and bridges to cars and codes. Keeping things secret is vital not only to spies, but to anybody who uses a computer or a credit card. The codes employed are all based on numbers, so understanding the science of numbers, known as number theory, is fundamental to the making and breaking of codes. That is why a workshop on number theory organised in Palo Alto by the American Institute of Mathematics was not quite as esoteric as it sounds. [Economist]