Alan Turing
Turing didn’t invent the computer — he proved what computation *is*, and where it must stop.
Cryptography
Secrets kept by mathematics rather than by trust.
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Shor's algorithm
Shor · 1994
Shor’s algorithm is a quantum algorithm for integer factorisation, developed by Peter Shor in 1994. It runs in polynomial time in log N and places factorisation in BQP. It is asymptotically faster than the general number field sieve.
Colossus computer
Tommy Flowers built Colossus on a bet that thousands of valves could run reliably where convention said hundreds was the limit. It worked, breaking Lorenz traffic through the war's final years — then vanished into thirty years of secrecy.
P versus NP problem
Stephen Cook's 1971 paper didn't solve P versus NP — it proved one problem could stand for all of them, which is why the question cryptography rests on is still open.
Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts
Thomas Young worked out that Egyptian cartouches spelled foreign kings' names phonetically; Jean-François Champollion needed one more comparison, in September 1822, to see that the same was true of native Egyptian rulers all along.