Top secret!
Top secret!
- Photos of the lecture
- Click here for the competition task
Prof Dr Andrea Peter-Koop (Institute of Mathematics)
In our everyday lives, numbers are often used to encode information. You can find them, for example, on goods in the supermarket (so-called barcodes) or on books. They also secure locks on houses and bank safes. We want to investigate how such numerical codes are constructed and, above all, how secure they actually are. 
The Roman general Julius Caesar developed a secret code to prevent enemy Gauls from being able to read letters containing orders to his soldiers. Even today, spies and secret agents still use complicated mathematical numerical keys in their work to transmit secret messages. We want to investigate the structure of various types of secret writing and decipher a secret text ourselves. Among other things, we will explore the question of how you can get rich with prime numbers and why even secret services are interested in such numbers. Please bring paper and pens!